The Wisdom That Progress Forgot: Sharing The Gems Of Our Ancestors 4pp1f

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Copyright © 2013 by Suresha Hill and One Sky Productions

Library of Congress Registration # TXu1-849-648

THE WISDOM THAT PROGRESS FORGOT

ISBN: 9781626757929

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FORWARD

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1_EXPLORING OUR ANCESTRIES; INTRODUCING THE FIRST GROUP OF ELDERS

DON LITTLE CLOUD - SEMINOLE / CREEK / MUSKOGEE

TOM PINKSON, PhD - HUICHOL SHAMAN

CHAPTER 2_KIKOSA ZANELANGA - AFRICAN SHAMAN

CHAPTER 3_PLAMEN TANEV – BULGARIA

CHAPTER 4_CAMILA MARTINEZ – CURANDERA MAZATEC / TIBETAN LAMA

CHAPTER 5_SWEET MEDICINE NATION – CHOCTAW / CHEROKEE

CHAPTER 6_PETER WOLF - JEWISH AMERICAN / TRACKER / WILDERNESS TRAINER

CHAPTER 7_ROBERT COLLINS, PHD – COMANCHE / HOUMA

CHAPTER 8_LADY SCOTLAND - AFRICA

CHAPTER 9_KOWSPI - CHIEF, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

CHAPTER 10_ZACHARY RUNNING WOLF BROWN - BLACKFOOT

CHAPTER 11_EDGAR SUDRABINS – LATVIA

CHAPTER 12_BONITA SIZEMORE - CHOCTAW, MICCOSUKEE, MONTAUK, IRISH

CHAPTER 13_TATA ERICK GONZALES – MAYAN SHAMAN / PRIEST

FORWARD

Liberation is the cry from the cultures exhausted in its present state. We are hoping to find again what would bring us to fertile ground or to proceed with what we have now, continuing on the course we have set for ourselves even though it is unsustainable?

What do we let go of and what to keep while we are embarking on this next Era? Asking these question sets us up for deep consideration of what we will say, think and do.

How do the sacred ways and truths of our old traditional ways play into this Next Global step? How to enter free from clutter, wounds and broken dreams towards this new world? In answering these questions I am inclined to follow first the threads of the tapestry of my ancestry beginning with the very encoded blueprint born in each of us.

Within the last moons I have felt a strong movement within me, deep inside my soul asking to be felt, danced with and with this the soul’s voice, asking me to listen for it is time for it to be heard. So I am listening even though we seemed to just be living our lives as usual, something significantly has changed.

While we slept, prayed or focused on tasks at hand, there was an acceleration, a peeling away from the old route and routines. We did, unbeknown to the mind, go down the rabbit hole’s dark and compressed Portal, which has brought us to a great clearing, reevaluating and readjusting to this new reactivated cellular time and location.

It both appears to be our normal world, yet it’s also like seeing into a room without stepping into it. We have more and different views now to explore. This time can be both concerning, a bit confusing, and rewarding.

I’m feeling this is a departure from what we designed toward what is the greater plan which was not made by us, but something long considered and planned for us, for those now born and for births coming into this zone and time period.

People have endured betrayals, detention, political and religious warring, either in a cultural sense or within their own inherent cultures’ endings. In these instances people have been stopped by outside forces from the ways of their former lives to have to surrender to the general mode for survival.

Today we have a chance to change this response and even cooperate with the consciousness of this New Era, which might begin with the void of false actions and words. May this be true that we leave behind the confusing double-talk.

We are now on the other side of this possibility of departing from the norm and listening to our inner guidance. My feelings have always been, coming from our education systems as they are, that we have always taught the form of fitting in and conformity through our schools. Instead we could teach self-reliance and trusting our inner feelings, we can teach choice-making.

Of course in being told the transparent truth without marketing we would foster other events which would change the ways we lived and how we interacted with this life gifted to us by the labors of our Elders’ dreams and hopes. We could manifest types of education that enliven us and bring with it this truth and justice.

We have been led and sold and told how to be, think, and react and as a result humanity is disenchanted, listless and lacking the very ability to cope with daily stress or resolve conflicts.

What would this new world look like to each of us? What vestments of our past or any of the preconditioning from our DNA are we taking into this New Era? We are carrying new “seeds” for this future and it is up to each of us to determine the place we plant it and how we will water it with our attention, or intentions.

It is time to light our fires like our ancestors of old whose warmth and protection settles the soul and feeds the body. Let’s look with fresh eyes like the wonder of a newborn at this blue-green mother earth and all she has for us. Let’s envision what it would look like to be innocent again and yet aware and joyful of all that is around us?

Are we able to purge the world of our personal problems? If so maybe this is the feeling we are having as this new year begins; feeling our created mazes and deadlocks, violence and governmental overthrows, along with our skeptical views of old policies which are just smoke and mirrors.

We are ready to create for ourselves this new Horizon so it is time to stop and review and take the next step from what is best for us today. It is time to develop the flexibility and listening to the inner voices and what the depth of truth can tell us about how this is done.

Close our ears to the metronome of materializing and governing Patriarchy. Let’s put our coats on and get outside and see what and how we can do one thing today that matters instead of one that is motivated by what will get us ahead or enable us to have more than another has.

This new era began for me by standing on a mountaintop facing east, awaiting the arrival of Venus in the form of the Morning Star, and the first rays of the sun. This all happened over a sacred mirror of sky lake on the side of a volcano in Guatemala.

During this time of paying our respects to our ancestors and those of the present day Mayan people, we danced and offered prayers and payments for our lives and everyone within it to this point. To the melodies of sacred songs and the accompaniment of marimbas, this great drama bloomed this unfoldment for all who had gathered to witness what would occur from these efforts.

We were not disappointed. This sunrise brought with it hope, willingness to make changes, and a t and non-polarized state of people of all cultures and countries to tears. We were in this moment empty and now with this rising new day, setting intentions together, we asked for guidance and assistance to read, feel and vision the next steps as a people united. We knew and awaited with this new dawn what would have to be surrendered to bring these changing and sacred times into our lives and beyond, to our sacred location in this heart of the Americas.

In this time we committed to kindle being in the new fire, taking the embers from this new fire to heart and to hold. Feeding this inner fire we set our new courses towards holding joy and honesty in our hearts; not letting this get blown out by any false thought, or by doubt and confusion .

I believe in this new time there’s been a great insertion of spirit, an exploration into one’s own responsibility for the earth, and how we treat and interact with our fellow inhabitants.

We can ponder what would this new life look like as we align with the center of this galaxy and our universe, and what it could cost in re-purposing or even abolishing the old code and the purification of our cycles if altered and changed now. We can imagine what our lives would look like without them.

We can consider what we will take upon ourselves to step into ownership, being the very ones that will make the difference. And we can also decide upon the values we will bring into it if we are to invest our hearts and soul into this new world.

I feel the old codes, when we saw the whole of this world, came with reverence. In the true ways we looked at how everything would need to be considered and included in determining a wholesome view and the right actions for us, the land, and air and waters.

Maybe we cannot stop the materialism this world is based upon nor its acceleration, yet we can individually make the difference in our own actions and thoughts towards this. It means we might have to take a leap of faith and be willing to see all without borders, labels or limitations. Risking to love and to not judge who can have it or what had to be done first to get it.

Are we able to take the leap of faith without knowing the script for the plan and to use that which is within us to guide us through this portal of our own personal black holes?

Each one of us has the opportunity to enter into this abyss and discover that there lies the very answer; that it might be in this very darkness, this “unknown birthing place”, this mixing of all our experienced and individual beliefs of what has or has not worked is this place of true knowing and truth.

Let’s trust that we have in us our ancestor’s truths that once spoke for the whole and considered the total and its effects, not just for the people but also to the things without human voices to speak for themselves. We are the ones who share this place with all who are here, like the rivers as well as all that lives in it.

We are also being called on to face and take responsibility for what we have destroyed in the name of progress and ownership, like the migration of deer and birds for progress and greed.

It is a new Era and for myself I hold that if we look and listen to our Wisdom Keepers and respect the community’s of their wisdom, we will practice gratitude and forgiveness, and gain joy for ourselves within our very attitudes.

It was seeded within you so there’s no need to expect others to lead or guide you to this. All we need to do is expect that we came with this within ourselves, to water that which unifies the efforts towards balance, and do our own part in all our words and actions.

When at the end of a day we can say that we did our very best, that our thoughts, actions and ideas considered others and the impact to our world, as Dr. Emoto said when he studied water, thought can change the dark to light, the impure to pure. As water vessels we must also do this within our own thoughts.

Know where your food comes from. Maybe just grow a container of herbs to contribute to the atmosphere or to our need for food. Share what you have in the abundance of expressions of love, joy and forgiveness.

Do not wait for someone else to pick up their trash, do it to make the place how you would love to see it. Honor life in some ways, like setting aside a portion of your food for someone else, or telling to the person or thing that you’re glad for its in your life today. Stop and talk to an old person, or to someone you don’t know. Find out what they did in their lives and in so doing experience life outside yourself.

Offer gifts of your abilities to others in our community, volunteering to build a house, turn a garden, teach a child to read, or to play an instrument. If you’re not using your bike give it to a child or person who needs it. In these ways we together creating the village of our world, not the Acropolis that limits us from interaction through fear.

Educate yourself at any age in what calls to you. Do it without worrying how it looks or sounds to others. Explore the world we live in. Get out of your own country and do not believe the propaganda that a place is not safe. I have been traveling for decades and find my views are not skewed by the news when I experience it for myself.

Wonder like a child and know you can change the world. It is in us to water this seed and when your tree of life bears fruit and new seeds, share and save some for those who come after us. It requires the small investment of each of us taking our place and the responsibility for those actions we do in each day.

Rites of age, honoring of the seasons of our lives and being in reverence for their places in our life’s ages make a difference. We can make places in nature or use those the Mother has already made as your altar to give gifts of thanks. Commit and pledge to listen, to follow your vision and be present for the coming of signs. Those instructions and leads will be our teachers and wisdom keepers whether they show up as human or creature. Ask them what they have to teach you.

Share your wisdom and its impacts, and not just the ones that felt good. Share those that gave you the life stories that were also in all the stories of your ancestor’s teachings and the songs of their bones when you listened and ed. The knowing is always within our indigenous songs.

Listen, be still, will to know yourself better. Be at peace with all outcomes. These are the ways of the past and also this new future.

- Sweet Medicine Nation

PREFACE

I’m writing this book because I had to. I was irretrievably drawn to do so. I was born in Ohio and my heritage is mixed with African, Irish, and Native American. I fell in love and married my high school sweetheart, graduated college, had a wonderful daughter and great friends. In spite of the goodness in all this there was something like a force pushing up from deep inside me in my twenties that began to peak in middle age. That force was connected to my Native American heritage which included Cherokee and Blackfoot on my mother’s side and Cherokee on my father’s side. For years it had yearned to express itself in some way.

I’d been asking for more details from both sides of the family, but very little was known. They’d died young and I’d only seen one photo of the kind and gentle face of Ida Pillar on my mother’s side who was the one from Ireland mixed with Cherokee or Blackfoot or both. I was told she held me once as a baby. Chief White Cloud and Annie Mae Keyes were on my father’s side along with another Native American no one mentioned. It was like that in those days.

There were no other details except that the Cherokee were from the Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee part of the country. Through the years I was moved to live in each of these places, but didn’t connect it to the roots of my ancestors until much later.

This yearning was intense and irrepressible. It was the most visceral sensation I’d ever felt, perhaps rivaled only by the desire to bear a child. Both refused to release themselves from my system until they reached fruition. Without having been taught, I discovered that many of the ways of being of my ancestors were alive in me.

I found myself talking to plants, trees, and feeling related to everything around me. I saw and felt their aliveness, a type of intelligence, sensitivity, and a right to be treated with care and respect. I hated the idea of stepping on an insect or killing a fly and often prayed for them if I did.

I found myself anticipating some form of communication from these creatures and began feeling and communing with nature from a young age. I didn’t want to buy a house and even resisted buying furniture. My husband thought it was all a little kooky but accepted it as people often do when they’re young.

I began gathering feathers, stones and seashells and standing outside staring at the sky. It took years before I understood why. I became plagued if not haunted by this force and began the search for a teacher who could solve the mysteries that were wanting to unfold from within.

When some wonderful teachers and masters appeared, serving the role of the elders and shaman in the community, I left everything behind in my oddly uncomfortable middle class life that was then dedicated to changing the way school systems were set up to teach children. I reduced my three bedroom townhouse of belongings down to two suitcases and set off on a journey of a lifetime.

After living in India and being immersed in Indian teachings for many years, in the 1990’s the Native part of my heritage set itself on fire inside. I began to participate in indigenous events and ed the Black Native American Association. It became clear that countless Americans shared a mixed heritage that included ancient wisdom.

I became excited to hear and share the stories of a few of those cultures in hopes that it might create a drumbeat that sounds in the heart and calls you. It fills in many gaps you might not have been able to articulate or label, but once you hear it, that light bulb goes off and the ing begins. The mystery is solved, the forces move where they were intended, and the haunting is translated into its intended language.

No matter where your roots arise from, you can look any direction in the world and find powerful wisdom. North America as far as the Inuit in the Arctic, in many of the outer regions of South America, Central America, the Middle East, the Far East, India, Northern Europe like Russia, the Laplanders, Eastern Europe, Australian Aborigines and the Mauri in New Zealand. Hawaii, Japan, Polynesia, and countless islands also have beautiful traditions regarding the spirit of their original cultures.

Only a small sampling are represented here but I encourage readers to explore the depth of our diverse origins and discover the magic, the divinity, the relationships to life that was instrumental in a type of harmony we can resurrect and move forward with.

Half of the proceeds from this book will go to the organizations of those who gave their time to this project and continue to help others realize the beauties in this way of life.

“The best way I have to honor God is to understand the secrets of Nature.”

Dr. Michio Kaku - Theoretical physicist

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In loving memory and gratitude for the service of our elder,

Wisdom Keeper and Keeper of the Great Pyramids

of Teotihuacan, Tlakaelel who ed on July 27, 2012

A translation of his last words is as follows:

“He asked us all to continue his work, and continue his message of unity and Peace that he has been bringing to the world. He asked us to continue teaching the importance of the Mexicanidad as a hope for the future of humanity. He asks us all to continue with the rebirth of the ancestral traditions. He is (in his words) transforming, integrating with the All, with the universe, with the cosmos. As I send this message to hundreds of you, please as he asked, to feel joy, to sing and dance.”

I’d also like to thank, honor and acknowledge my ancestors, all the elders, shaman, medicine people and walkers of this way for participating in this project and for the spirit and service they bring to the world. Ho Mitakuye Oyasin.

INTRODUCTION

Our world is inexplicably beautiful and full of immeasurable richness of every imaginable kind as well as some we can’t yet imagine. The majesty of the mountains, the mystery and depth of our oceans and skies, the exquisite, colorfilled, diverse wonder of its life forms and the miracle of life itself are a daily source of wonder and awe.

Each of us knows this on so many levels every time we go outside for a walk, lie on the beach and lift our skin to the sun, stare at the infinity of a starry night, or rest under the shade of a tree in our yard. We can’t help but smile at the new blossoms in Spring or when we inhale the subtle and sublime fragrance they release.

Nature is so healing and balancing we know to go for a hike or a sail, or to take a vacation in a place where we will immerse ourselves in it. We know all this and more about our glorious earth, and one more bridge will help us to appreciate, love, and respect it even more. This is the bridge of recognition that we are connected to nature in more ways than the most vital ones of it feeding and breathing us every second.

There is so much more it can teach us.

WAYS WE WALK ON THE EARTH

I have heard of ways where a visionary could look through a hole in a rock and see the future; where there were tribes who could speak at a distance with a drum, and elders who could intervene in life circumstances through consciousness before physical manifestation. I’ve heard of those who hear the voices of plants and flowers and can then know of their healing properties, their

growing cycles, their food value, and which parts of the plant to use.

There were those who knew where vortexes were in the earth so that even in unsatisfactory or scarce conditions, yielding of crops could still happen as enough to feed the entire clan. I’ve heard from those who live without money, where everyone owns everything and disagreements are settled with a decision from the one all respect. I’ve heard of villages where the children don’t cry, where the only competition is in play, and violence is unheard of.

I’ve met people who were born awake with full consciousness, those who can become invisible, especially when it pertains to leaving a mark on the path they walk. I’ve heard of those who can tell the mood, emotion, health, and decisionmaking process - over 1,000 bits of information by looking at a footprint, and those who found a lost child by asking a nearby horse. I spoke with a woman who said, “Bugs don’t bite on my land because there is harmony and balance here”, and countless stories of people whose lives have been saved by animals.

There are stories about trees who catch a blight and transfer the information to nearby trees who then produce an antidote to that pest. There are also stories that if a man enters a room and cuts a stem of a plant, all those near it shriek and continue to shriek when the man comes back into the room.

Nature is intelligent, sensitive, and aware. Nature is an astounding source of healing, of wisdom, of life, of beauty, majesty, of comion and serenity. For millennia there were ways of being that recognized, respected, and honored the gifts of Nature, and treated her as a valued and sacred part of the community.

There are still a few of the global community who walk in this way that we could learn a lot from; who can teach us how to hear, see, and sense nature in new and deeper ways so that its many more dimensions can be

revealed. They can teach us to live in the ways of sacred relationship that would extend not only to Nature, but to one another as well.

ECOSYSTEMS AND BIODIVERSITY

How we walk on the earth touches everything that lives here and its ability to survive and thrive. Bio-diversity is influenced naturally by climate factors, predators, and the amount of food available in any given season, and recently numerous man-made factors have been added into the mix.

Every species is part of a circular ‘chain’ of life that is inextricably intertwined and interdependent, as is true of the human body. If one foot becomes broken, paralyzed, or amputated, it would be very difficult for the rest of the body to continue moving freely. Many activities would have to be omitted, or greatly modified, and several compensatory muscles would become strained if one part were reduced in capability.

Although most of the body appears to be at a distance from the feet, the form and function of our bodies are dependent upon them.

In an ecosystem, every species has the potential of undergoing an exponential population growth, but these tendencies are kept in check by various balancing interactions within the system. Exponential runaways will appear only when the ecosystem is severely disturbed. Then some plants will turn into ‘weeds’, some animals become ‘pests’ and other species will be exterminated, and thus the balance of the whole system will be threatened.

“Web of Life”

All living beings, including humans, are dependent upon the biodiversity of the Earth’s ecosystems. We are not always aware of how all the diverse species make contributions to the whole, just as we are still trying to understand the roles that many of the cells in our bodies play. Lack of understanding doesn’t make their roles any less significant. Unfamiliarity with a particular species doesn’t mean that we can live well without it.

Organs we believed to not be needed in the human body were later discovered to have an important function, such as the spleen, appendix, and tonsils. In the October, 1999 edition of the Scientific American, an article by Professor Loren G. Martin at the University of Oklahoma in the department of Physiology states:

“For years, the appendix was credited with very little physiological function. We now know, however, that the appendix serves an important role in the fetus and in young adults.

Endocrine cells appear in the appendix of the human fetus at around the 11th week of development. These endocrine cells of the fetal appendix have been shown to produce various biogenic amines and peptide hormones, compounds that assist with various biological control (homeostatic) mechanisms.

Among adult humans, the appendix is now thought to be involved primarily in immune functions. Researchers have also shown that the appendix is involved in the production of molecules that help to direct the movement of lymphocytes to various other locations in the body.”

Mankind has been perpetrating the loss of countless species on a weekly if not daily basis without understanding clearly how they contribute to the health of the

whole. We’ve also added into the mix countless unnatural chemicals and substances that infiltrate vital systems that we know we cannot live without. Some of these chemicals disrupt our endocrine system which is essential to health.

The endocrine system is one of the body’s main communication networks and is responsible for controlling and coordinating numerous body functions. Hormones are first produced by the endocrine tissues, such as the ovaries, testes, pituitary, thyroid and pancreas, then secreted into the blood to act as the body’s chemical messengers where they direct communication and coordination among other tissues throughout the body.

“In the traditional view, the nervous system, endocrine system, and immune system are separate and serve different functions…. studied in three separate disciplines - neuroscience, endocrinology, and immunology. However, the recent peptide research has shown in dramatic ways that these conceptual separations are merely historical artifices that can no longer be maintained. According to Candace Pert, the three systems must be seen a forming a single psychosomatic network.”

“Web of Life”

For example, xeno (foreign) hormones have been released into the air from the production of plastics and pesticides. They resemble and therefore mimic natural hormones so the body absorbs them. Xenohormones, like GMO’s and some pesticides, antagonize natural hormones and block the receptors of natural hormones like progesterone, thyroid, and androgen in males.

Some repercussions include increased reproductive cancers, reduced fertility, low sperm count, increased PMS, low testosterone and an abnormally small

penis. New research funded by the NIEHS (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) also found that endocrine disruptors may affect not just the offspring of mothers exposed during pregnancy but future offspring as well.

We are also impeding nature’s ability to communicate with itself while knowing that we aren’t able to understand these functions’ relationship to the whole. This lack of understanding is the cause of the current result. Life is a vibrant, continuous, interconnected loop of systems that each plays a role in the circle of life. We cannot afford to alter, reduce, or eliminate uncountable species and their functions in nature and expect a healthy outcome.

NATURE MIRRORS OUR BODIES

Nature provides checks and balances towards its own sustainability, but the inbuilt adaptations are quite slow, and cannot match the rate of modern demands. For example, the vegetation around bodies of water regulates and stabilizes water runoff acting as a modulator of extreme conditions like flood or drought. Much of that vegetation is now gone.

“Advancing to even smaller levels in their explorations of the phenomena of life, biologists found that the characteristics of all living organisms - from bacteria to humans - were encoded in their chromosomes in the same chemical substance, using the same code script.”

- Fritzov Capra

In addition, millions of people have built homes and businesses in recent decades where forests with important functions used to be. Clear-cutting for

lumber, cattle grazing, or agribusiness reduced the quality and quantity of water, reduced wildlife and bio-diversity, and produced harsh weather conditions that has resulted in increased fires and floods.

People in our society are in a health crisis largely because their adaptogenic systems are being overloaded with enormous quantities of toxic and unnatural substances, combined with increased stress, less exercise, a faster pace, and reduced rest where the body would be able to release, reset and restore. The earth is in health crisis because it’s also being overloaded with scores of toxins and losses that it doesn’t have enough time to mend, adapt to, or to restore.

If our intestines are irritable, clogged, and imbalanced in its natural, diverse flora due to stress, bad diet, or too many antibiotics, they will have difficulty breaking down and absorbing nutrients to strengthen the body.

Soil, like our intestines, is dependent upon microorganisms to transform waste from living organisms into nutrients for the soil. We’ve infested the soil with pesticides that wind up hurting earthworms and kill helpful microorganisms minimizing the nutrients available for the soil and the food that grows there. Our bodies and the body of the earth mirror each other.

Toxins or bad diet can harm our kidneys and liver, just as pollutants in the soil and water can erode their filtration systems. Wetlands in particular are filtration systems for the earth and water. They’re effective filters for pollutants like heavy metals, while also frequently destroying harmful organisms and reducing the demand for oxygen.

Vegetation is essential for the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and for the maintenance of water and humidity levels. Undisturbed forests help maintain rainfall in a given area as it recycles the moisture back into

the atmosphere. It also provides nests and roosts for diversity of birds that pollinate and control insect populations.

In addition to being a vital source of food for countless species, vegetation supplies important medicines and remedies for injuries, disease, and other weakened states. In the same way that our bodies cannot be force-fed heavy doses of toxic substances that are foreign to it while having reduced enzymes to metabolize them, damaged excretory systems to eliminate them, and insufficient time for rest to accomplish this daunting task, neither can the earth, air, or water. Whatever we do to impact Nature impacts us to the same degree, and most often in the same way.

BIODIVERSITY AND DISTURBED HABITATS

If your instrument in the symphony of life is not being played in the same key, it throws off the sound of the entire piece of music.

After two decades of intensive research, the precise details of this code (script) were unraveled. Biologists have discovered the alphabet of a truly universal language of life. - Fritzov Capra

Dozens of species have become extinct while awaiting federal protection, and those are only the ones that we know about. Our orchestra has lost many of its instruments. Some may never be heard again, others play in a different key as a result. Many symphonies will have lost their harmonies, their rhythms, and some of symphonies will never be played again. According to SustainableTable.org:

“Although many of our most important crops are wind-pollinated and do not require pollinators, 39 of the leading 57 global crops benefit from natural pollinators, such as birds and insects. Agro-biodiversity is the result of thousands of years of human intervention in selectively breeding traits in animals and crops for particular agricultural advantages.

This abundance of diversity is the result of farmers artificially selecting traits over generations for specific purposes, like resistance to disease, tolerance to high altitudes or poor soils, etc. This diversity is important for food security—in the event that a particular crop variety fails due to drought, flooding or a disease, another variety might survive to avoid food shortages.

The FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the U.N.) has estimated that during the last century, 75 percent of crop genetic diversity has been lost, a phenomenon referred to as genetic erosion. in the 1970s, a lack of genetic diversity in US corn varieties resulted in the loss of over 1 billion US dollars due to a lack of resistance to leaf blight. Unfortunately, the situation has not improved today as increasingly, industrial food production relies on fewer and fewer crop varieties and animal breeds.“

The World Resources Institute reports that many forested areas are breeding grounds for wildlife and protect the genetic pool for a variety of species. We don’t know yet how long it would take to remedy a loss of habitat and biodiversity from manmade circumstances. To date, almost 500 species of genetically distinct trees are endangered worldwide, and over 1500 varieties of rice have already become extinct in Indonesia in less than two decades.

THE DOMINO EFFECT OF GENETICALLY MODIFYING PLANTS

The domino effect of the loss of one species, or of one habitat, or one regulating

function can have broad and catastrophic consequences that will then lead to other sweeping effects. Sudden loss of an entire crop to disease has already plagued oranges, potatoes, rice, corn, and wheat from loss of diversity that introducing GMO’s only complicates. In this way, the healthy remaining strains of crops and vegetation become contaminated.

Most animals refuse to eat it

Dr. Joseph Mercola, who reports on recent research states, “I strongly believe that one of the most obvious clues about the danger of GMO foods are that just about EVERY species of animal that is offered a GMO food versus a non-GMO food will avoid the GMO one. Many times they will do this to the point of starvation, as they have an intuitive sense of the danger of this food.”

Those who eat it die soon after

He goes on to say that in 2005, Dr. Irina Ermakova, one of the senior scientists with the Russian National Academy of Sciences, reported that more than 50 percent of the babies from mother rats that were fed GM soy died within three weeks, compared to a 10 % death rate among the controls… a death rate five times higher than normal, identical to the findings in the more recent hamster study.

In a small village in Andhra Pradesh, buffalo grazed on cotton plants for eight years without incident. On January 3rd, 2008, the buffalo grazed on Bt cotton plants for the first time. All 13 were sick the next day; all died within 3 days. Bt corn was also implicated in the deaths of cows in , and horses, water buffaloes, and chickens in The Philippines.

In India, animals graze on cotton plants after harvest. But when shepherds let sheep graze on Bt cotton (genetically modified) plants, thousands died. Post mortems showed severe irritation and black patches in both intestines and liver (as well as enlarged bile ducts). Investigators said preliminary evidence “strongly suggests that the sheep mortality was due to a toxin… most probably Bt-toxin.” In a small follow-up feeding study by the Deccan Development Society, all sheep fed Bt cotton plants died within 30 days; those that grazed on natural cotton plants remained healthy.

Pollination can spread the GM effects to healthy crops

After corn, soy and wheat, alfalfa is the most widely grown crop in the US. Allowing GM alfalfa to be deregulated could spell disaster in several ways. It’s easily cross-pollinated by bees and wind, and it’s a perennial, meaning GM alfalfa could live on for years, spreading their genetically modified traits far and wide for a long period of time.

They do not decrease the use of pesticides

Closely tied to the production of GM crops is the use of the herbicide Roundup, which contains glyphosate. Monsanto’s Roundup is the most widely used herbicide in the world, and contrary to the popular belief propagated by industry, pesticide use has significantly increased - DOUBLED since 2005 - rather than decreased with the use of GM crops.

They cause damage to the soil

Dr. Mercola reports, “As it turns out, this is a serious problem for more reasons

than one. Not only are GM food crops saturated with more pesticides than ever before, which naturally ends up in your body when you eat them, but glyphosate may also be killing the soil itself. This startling conclusion comes straight from one of the USDA’s own scientists, Dr. Kremer. According to this article in Grist, include evidence that glyphosate causes:

damage to beneficial microbes in the soil increasing the likelihood of infection of a crop by soil pathogens

interference with nutrient uptake by the plant

reduced efficiency of symbiotic nitrogen fixation

overall lower-than-expected plant productivity”

Doctors Warn Against GMO’S

Jeffrey Smith has done extensive research on the effects of genetically modifying food and has shared some of his findings that the medical community has confirmed. The findings are so staggering, that some doctors called for a moratorium on the practice. Jeffrey’s article states that the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) called for a moratorium on GM foods, long-term independent studies, and labeling.

AAEM’s position paper stated, “Several animal studies indicate serious health

risks associated with GM food,” including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastro-intestinal system.

They conclude, “There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation,” as defined by recognized scientific criteria. “The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies.”

Evidence is conclusive that they damage human health

Dr. Jennifer Armstrong, President of AAEM, says, “Physicians are probably seeing the effects in their patients, but need to know how to ask the right questions.” World renowned biologist Pushpa M. Bhargava goes one step further. After reviewing more than 600 scientific journals, he concludes that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are a major contributor to the sharply deteriorating health of Americans.

Among the population, biologist David Schubert of the Salk Institute warns that “children are the most likely to be adversely effected by toxins and other dietary problems” related to GM foods. He says without adequate studies, the children become ‘the experimental animals.’

The Institute of Biological Sciences at the University of Brazil reports that the Bt (Bacillus Thuringensis) toxin in Monsanto’s genetically modified corn and soy has been linked to organ failure in humans. It has turned up in the bloodstreams of pregnant women and their fetuses. Now, a study published in the Journal of Hematology & Thromboembolic Diseases suggests that some forms of the Bt toxin may also contribute to certain blood cancers, such as leukemia.

GMOs Provoke Immune Reactions

AAEM states, “Multiple animal studies show significant immune dysregulation,” including increase in cytokines, which are “associated with asthma, allergy, and inflammation”—all on the rise in the US. According to GM food safety expert Dr. Arpad Pusztai, changes in the immune status of GM animals are “a consistent feature of all the studies.” Even Monsanto’s own research showed significant immune system changes in rats fed Bt corn. A November 2008 by the Italian government also found that mice have an immune reaction to Bt corn.

GM soy and corn each contain two new proteins with allergenic properties. GM soy has up to seven times more trypsin inhibitor—a known soy allergen, and skin prick tests show some people react to GM soy but not to non-GM soy. Soon after GM soy was introduced to the UK, soy allergies skyrocketed by 50%. Perhaps the US epidemic of food allergies and asthma is a casualty of genetic manipulation. We’ve in many ways created numerous far worse problems than the initial one. We’ve effectively dropped an atomic bomb into our food supply to kill an insect.

GMOs Remain Inside of Us

The only published human feeding study revealed what may be the most dangerous problem from GM foods. The gene inserted into GM soy transfers into the DNA of bacteria living inside our intestines and continues to function. This means that long after we stop eating GMOs, we may still have potentially harmful GM proteins produced continuously inside of us. Put more plainly, eating a corn chip produced from Bt corn might transform our intestinal bacteria into living pesticide factories, possibly for the rest of our lives.

When evidence of gene transfer is reported at medical conferences around the US, doctors often respond by citing the huge increase of gastrointestinal problems among their patients over the last decade. GM foods might be colonizing the gut flora of North Americans.

Here is a key area where an attempt to solve one problem generates several new problems without solving the original one. Not only do we wind up with less production from the plants, it doesn’t decrease the need for pesticides, it stimulates disease, sterility and early death in those who ingest the plants, and it damages the soil - this failed attempt to solve a problem has dominos that are still falling, yet it is still allowed to be used as a solution.

THE COST OF UNEXAMINED CONCEPTS

Technology Author David Abrams comments, “As technological civilization diminishes the biotic diversity of the earth, language itself is diminished. As humans reduce their environment, so they reduce themselves. Peoples’ options, their insights and visions, their ability to perceive, think, or sense an existence that is beyond what is presented and programmed by the schools and media will shrink into a spectrum of color and sound that continues to weaken in its artificial redundancy.”

Compared to children in limited technologically advanced cultures, Western children’s brains are already less able to perceive ranges of colors and sounds, and less able to comprehend language and to notice or draw meaning from their surroundings. Brain function is being altered by the virtual reality it has entered into relationship with neurologically.

Some doctors are now prescribing Vitamin ‘G’ for green, for time in nature. Studies show and I quote from Dr. Ben Kim’s newsletter.

A study published in the 1997 issue of the Journal of Environmental Psychology found that when people move from urban areas to rural areas for a few days, they are less irritable, concentration and problem-solving abilities improve, and mental fatigue is reduced.

A recent study published in the July 2006 issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that the percentage of green space in a person’s living environment is positively associated with their perception of their general health. In other words, the more green space they are exposed to in their living environment, the healthier they feel they are.

A study published in the December 2002 issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that senior citizens living in a densely populated urban megacity (Tokyo) lived longer if they had easy access to a public green space (e.g. a park) where they could take walks.

Modern advances in technology in many instances have been extremely helpful and I am not advocated getting rid of it, but to maintain in every instance a balance on a personal, industrial, and ecological level.

Climate change

A recent, comprehensive report from the Global Humanitarian Forum has warned the world that climate change alone is a “silent crisis” that is killing

300,000 people each year. They have estimated that this number will double by 2030 and that more than 300 million people are already seriously affected by the gradual warming of the earth. Of these 300 million, 90% are affected by gradual environmental degradation leading to malnutrition, disease, and diarrhea. 99% of these deaths are in developing countries who contribute less than 1% of carbon emissions.

Much of the destruction the planet is experiencing at the hands of mankind is frivolous, unexamined, and unnecessary. For example, 57 million trees a year are cut down for catalogues alone, overlooking the alternative approach that 30 million pounds of greenhouse gases per year could be eliminated by using recycled paper.

The Union of Concerned Scientists report: “Just to be clear, there are not two sides to this story. Sea levels are rising. The flooding from Hurricane Sandy was undeniably worse because of it.”

Industrial toxins

Other forms of industrial toxins produced by paper mills include nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and volatile organic chemicals which are released into the air through leaky valves and open-ended lines. These air emissions often produce the unpleasant odor found in the vicinity of many mills. Additional industrial toxins generated by the papermaking process include mercury, which is used in fungicidal processes; cellulosic fibers, which congeal into toxic sludge; and chlorophenolic wood preservatives and anti-sap stains.

For Our Water

The fish downstream of a paper mill in North Carolina in the Pigeon River were seriously affected by the pollutant released into the water called dioxin. Studies showed that their hormonal, endocrine, and metabolic systems were adversely affected, their DNA damaged, and cancerous lesions were created.

Humans were poisoned by the same substances that we poison the water and its fish with. People living in the Pigeon River area who used the water and ate the fish had increased cancer rates. Environmental Defense cites that, “Over 7 billion pounds of toxic chemicals are released by industry into the nation’s environment each year, including over 100 million pounds of recognized carcinogens.”

For Our Food

One of the toxins that has been cited by the EPA as a known carcinogen with “no known safe levels of exposure” is dioxin, produced in paper production. Dioxin is formed as an unintentional by-product of many industrial processes involving chlorine such as waste incineration, chemical and pesticide manufacturing and pulp and paper bleaching.

Due to their treated food supply, it is most often found in beef, chicken, and their ‘by-products’ - milk and eggs, but also is absorbed into fish from the water they swim in. Through our food supply, dioxin winds up in humans and has been recently found in a large amount of breast cancer tissue samples since it travels to fat.

In Our Air

Neither fish nor humans tolerate the heavy metals released from coal mines, which are often drained into the water source nearby. The burning of coal releases toxic substances including carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury compounds.

The most economically significant consequence of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions is acid rain, which occurs when these gases react with water and oxygen in the atmosphere to form acidic compounds. When the compounds return to the earth in the form of rain, they can cause extensive damage to property and soil.

Mercury compounds released from coal plants are extremely toxic to humans. These compounds can cause permanent damage to the brain and kidneys, as well as to fetuses. It is a substantial price for miners and their families to have their health risked and possibly their lives shortened by the toxicity, and it’s an immense price to pay when entire bodies of water are contaminated along with every ecosystem therein, all the way up the food chain.

Research has established a link between the respiratory system of humans and the toxins in pesticides and their relationship to asthma. Asthma is the leading cause of absenteeism in schools where 1 in 8 children fall victim to this condition (possibly higher in agricultural areas of southern California) and more than 14 million days a year are lost because of asthmatic attacks.

The number of children dying from asthma tripled between 1976 and 1999, showing that consequences of widespread introduction of toxins in the environment are deadly, and on the rise. Both cigarette smoke and pesticides have been shown to both cause and trigger asthma attacks. The use of these toxic substances and the respiratory issues they cause are preventable.

It’s not more difficult and it’s not more expensive to produce healthy food, clean energy, or safe products that don’t harm the environment. It only needs a decision followed by a commitment. Some improvements are already on the way.

ACTIONS ON THE HORIZON

For Our Water

In two critical areas concerning our water and food supply, change is in the air. Environmental Protection Agency Lisa Jackson met with governors of states that touch the inland waterways to describe an “action plan” that will focus on eliminating invasive species, cleaning up pollutants, and remediating more than a half million acres of the area’s wetlands, she told reporters.

“It’s about creating a new standard of care for the Great Lakes system,” Jackson said. “Instead of minimizing harm, our new standard of care is to leave the Great Lakes better for the next generation than the condition in which we inherited them.”

The EPA plan released February 2010 will use the 2.2 billion dollars Congress allocated to clean up top pollution sites; block toxic runoff from cities and farms; restore sensitive wetlands; and establish a “zero tolerance policy” toward invasive species like the Asian carp who devour more than their share of food and threaten the safety of boaters. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has laid out the details of a five-year blueprint that will clean and protect the world’s largest freshwater source from its “150 years of abuse.”

For Our Earth

Rainforest Action Network has led relentless efforts to change the way major corporations do business. Among a few of the strides that come as a result of their efforts include a promise from Disney reduce the use of paper resulting in the cutting of rainforest trees, and convincing Bank of America to cut funding for companies using mountain top removal to access coal.

With future generations in mind, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Senate Environment Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer on Thursday, February 13th 2013 proposed the most comprehensive legislation ever to stop global warming. Boxer signed onto Bernie’s bill, she said, because it’s “the gold standard.” More effort will be needed to the legislation.

For Our Air

Possible help for the industrial toxins include three reduction methods being implemented in the coal industry are the use of scrubbers and mercury controls, as well as the closure of old plants. Various types of technological equipment systems, including scrubbers, bag houses, and activated carbon injections, are used to capture pollutants before they are released into the air. Although Georgia has not done so, several states have also adopted strict mercury pollution reduction standards. These increases in standards typically lead the way to newer, cleaner plants that in turn lead to a decrease in carbon dioxide pollution.

That being said, a November 2011 Associated Press article reports that the world emitted about 564 million more tons of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009, an increase of 6 percent. Burning coal is the biggest carbon source worldwide and emissions from that jumped nearly 8 percent in 2010. Extra pollution in China and the U.S. for more than half the increase in

emissions last year, reporter Marland said.

The EPA just announced in December 2011 that it has finalized The Mercury Rule, one of the most important updates to the Clean Air Act in the Act’s 40 year history. Thanks go to Lisa Jackson of the EPA and the Obama istration. By substantially reducing coal plants’ toxic pollution in our air — where it gets into our water and our food — this rule provide Americans with a projected $60 to $140 billion in medical benefits in 2016.

Not only that, but installing upgraded pollution control equipment to allow power plants to comply with this rule is expected to create nearly 55,000 short and long-term jobs. That’s about 50,000 more jobs than will be created by building the dirty Keystone XL Pipeline, which was found to actually kill more jobs than it creates long-term, by the only independent analysis conducted on its economic impacts.

For our Toxic Waste

A group of students and professors from Yale University have found a fungi in the Amazon rainforest that can degrade and utilize the common plastic polyurethane (PUR). As part of the university’s Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory educational program, designed to engage undergraduate students in discovery-based research, the group searched for plants and cultured the microorganisms within their tissue.

Several active organisms were identified, including two distinct isolates of Pestalotiopsis microspora with the ability to efficiently degrade and utilize PUR as the sole carbon source when grown anaerobically, a unique observation among reported PUR biodegradation activities.

Polyurethane is a big part of our mounting waste problem and this is a new possible solution for managing it. The fungi can survive on polyurethane alone and is uniquely able to do so in an oxygen-free environment. The Yale University team has published its findings in the article ‘Biodegradation of Polyester Polyurethane by Endophytic Fungi’ for the Applied and Environmental Microbiology journal.

For Our Food

The Institute for Responsible Technology reports that, “Doctors Call for GMO Moratorium”. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has called for long-term independent studies, labeling and a moratorium on GM foods. They called on “Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community, and the public to avoid GM (genetically modified) foods when possible and provide educational materials concerning GM foods and health risks.”

More and more doctors are already prescribing GM-free diets. Dr. Amy Dean, a Michigan internal medicine specialist, and board member of AAEM says, “I strongly recommend patients eat strictly non-genetically modified foods.” Ohio allergist Dr. John Boyles says “I used to test for soy allergies all the time, but now that soy is genetically engineered, it is so dangerous that I tell people never to eat it.”

We have as a nation such tremendous respect for our doctors - the modern version of the ‘medicine man’. For them to step more into the role of our protectors - to refuse to ister unsafe drugs or vaccines, to refuse to employ risk-filled procedures that have little benefit, and to become outspoken on the dangers of those who employ such processes will be invaluable to the health and well-being of our society.

Hungary has taken a bold stand against biotech giant Monsanto and genetic modification by destroying 1000 acres of maize found to have been grown with genetically modified seeds, according to Hungary deputy state secretary of the Ministry of Rural Development Lajos Bognar. Unlike many European Union countries, Hungary is a nation where genetically modified (GM) seeds are banned. In a similar stance against GM ingredients, Peru has also ed a 10 year ban on GM foods. (Anthony Gucciardi Natural Society; November 27, 2011)

French environment and agricultural ministers are seeking an EU-wide ban of Monsanto’s MON810 Bt corn variety that is already outlawed in Hungary, Austria, , Greece, and Luxembourg.

A growing number of sustainable farmers are preserving agricultural variety and protecting biodiversity by raising ‘heritage’ and ‘heirloom’ animal breeds, fruits, and vegetables. As responsible stewards of the land, sustainable farmers raise only as many animals as the land is capable of handling, and avoid using harmful pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

By ing these farmers, you can help promote biodiversity and protect valuable breeds of animals and plants from facing extinction.

For Our Connection

At puberty, the time when the human brain is at its peak and the personality of a child is on the brink of exploding into creativity or rebellion, it is the perfect time to some of the rites of age that initiated our youth into responsive adulthood; into direct and connection with the inherent,

natural order of things.

For many of the earlier peoples who inhabited the earth, their connection to other forms of life and the life force that sustains those forms became revealed during those rites. Most of what drives concepts and behavior is embedded in the unconscious - the foundation of values and conditioning that shapes perception and beliefs. When awareness opens and becomes conscious within the inherent natural order of things the perceptions, beliefs, and decisions can more easily shift.

In the meantime, we can see within nature how each imbalance within other living systems not only directly affect us, but often produce the same types of imbalance and illness within our own bodies.

There is nothing wrong with commerce, developing ideas that make life easier, or making a profit in a business that also creates jobs for society, but one ingredient that is missing is the link to the future vision of sustainability, and asking the questions:

Do agri-business and technology create worse problems than the ones they’re attempting to solve?

Have we taken into consideration how introducing a new idea affects the living system that’s already in place?

Can harmlessness be a key consideration before allowing any new invention, product, food, or chemical onto the market?

Can we make greater efforts to educate and raise awareness how all of life is interconnected with human life?

In this way, the vision and wisdom for sustainability are not vulnerable to each change in governing bodies. In this way, we will not only be teaching men to fish so there will be enough food for generations to come, we will also ensure that the water the fish live and breed in will be safe. The other ingredient is the awakened connection to what life is.

Chapter 1

EXPLORING OUR ANCESTRIES

Introducing the

FIRST GROUP OF MEDICINE MEN AND ELDERS

Don - Kikosa - Tom

Don Little Cloud: The first thing I’d like to do is to call on my ancestors to enter the circle.

Tom Pinkson: Ho, may it be so.

Kikosa: Welcome the ancestors.

Q: You mentioned something earlier about sitting in a circle enabling the ancestors to come? Could you say more about that?

Don: Well, within our culture, in any of our activities if it’s like a governmental thing where all the elders get together, or if it’s dancers at a pow wow we use the circle and we believe that our ancestors are in that circle.

That’s why a lot of times when you go to a pow wow, once it starts they don’t allow anyone to walk across the circle because there are supposed to be ancestors in the circle. The circle also is the way the earth is formed - round. It also represents mother earth and the drums give us the heartbeat of the earth.

Q: Thank you, Don. Ours is not a homogeneous culture, so there’s not a singularity of thought or philosophy to bind the group together. Many of us have lost the connection to our ancestry and the roots of the culture they sprung out of. Our ancestors used to on wisdom and initiate us into customs that sustain us.

In my way of thinking, missing that inheritance of wisdom in ways of the heart, the spirit, and our initiation into an awakened connection with all of life, symptoms of that arise in our hybrid culture. Some of the symptoms include

countless extinct or endangered species, plus pollution of air, land, water, and food rather than viewing and treating them as sacred for our existence here.

I’m concerned that a wealth of wisdom is potentially going to be lost if we continue in this direction because the elders who carry it will also become extinct. We will have missed a chance for them to share traditional ways that could enrich modern lifestyles, and inspire the return to a more balanced, natural way.

From here arises the purpose of this interview, to reach into that pool of wisdom, and through those of you who have sustained your connection to indigenous culture and to explore what can re-weave the disconnect. Perhaps in revisiting those lifestyles that remind us of how to reconnect with ourselves, we can more easily find ways to recreate balance and harmony within our communities.

In our culture, and on the planet, many of our species who have lived in harmony for millennia are either endangered or already extinct, and the air is polluted, the food is polluted, the water is polluted. Somehow it has occurred that what used to give all life sustenance is now toxic and even impacting the ability to reproduce.

Countless indigenous cultures have lived on this planet for many thousands of years without these particular types of problems arising, and even those indigenous societies are in danger of becoming extinct. I’m concerned that a wealth of wisdom is potentially going to be lost if that occurs.

So the reason I’ve invited you to come is that I reach now into that pool of wisdom and through those of you who have sustained your connection to those indigenous cultures. Through you we can revisit those lifestyles that teach us

how to return to balance, that remind us of how to reconnect within ourselves then find ways to reconnect and recreate harmony and balance within our communities.

Possibly that connection can spill over from the home into other personal relationships in the workplace with professional relationships, and with all forms of life. So, thank you so much for ing in this discussion, for being willing to participate and hopefully some help will come for this crisis of consciousness. I’d like to start with each of you introducing yourselves, telling us a little about your background and the cultures that you’re from.

KIKOSA ZANELANGA

K: My name is Kikosa Ajangu. My original name is Zanelanga, which means the person who comes with the sun. That name was given to me by my spiritual father, Vutmazulu Credo Mutwa. I’m originally from the Bashi people, or I should say, the Bashi community of memory. We live in the Eastern part of the country called now Zaire.

My task as a spiritual truth seeker was mostly undertaken in exile. Although I’ve been chosen to know by my grandfather, I never had the chance to receive formal training among my people or in the secret societies - all sorts of initiations - which we call centers of wisdom.

So coming into exile and facing the challenges one faces in this part of the world helped me in trying to find or to reach back to my memory and emerge as a true initiate. I may say that I was self-guided in the beginning - along the way, yes I found a few teachers and as of now my main teacher is Vutmazulu Credo Mutwa.

I don’t know where I stand as an initiate, but the old man thinks highly of me, and that’s the only thing one can say.

Q: You mentioned something I’d like to go back to. You said you’d been ‘chosen to know’. What does that mean?

K: You see in every family, there must be 1 to 4 people who are chosen by the ancestors of that family to be able to have access to the land of mysteries. And these people are chosen who’ll have to undergo a specific training which will enable them to tap into the land or moving from the level of the mystery.

I think when a community is disintegrated, or is disintegrating it is so difficult for children who are chosen to know to grow up and emerge as a legitimate - I think the Native Americans call them shamans. But I think perhaps the way life is rebuilding itself, or the new ways that people are finding to guide others, I’ve been able to find this teacher outside of my community who also sees that I am chosen to know.

Q: And you mentioned you were in exile? Is that correct?

K: Yes, I left the country almost fifteen years ago. We had students organize strikes against the government, and because those governments are not legitimate and depend on force mainly to maintain themselves in power, whoever who oppose them has to be dealt with in a violent manner.

Q: And you also mentioned community of memory. What does that mean to you when you say ‘community of memory’?

K: You see, a community is not just a group of people who come together to do rituals, or who come together because of any specific orientation, if it is color, sexuality, or whatever it is. The community must have some beings who live in the spirit world, and who are guiding it. So for a group to come together, people must be able to tap into spiritual forces and these forces will guide them.

I think in Africa what perhaps has been replacing it, is that people who have come together were able to find in their own lineage, or in their blood relations find those great spirits who accepted to guide them. And these people have been deified - not worshiped, but deified, and rank as ancestors.

For us, there is no way a community can exist without ancestors. Yes, a bunch of people may come together for a specific purpose, but that does not establish a community in our understanding. And the memory has to be enshrined in a specific sacred space and usually it is a burial ground of the community.

And it is there where the whole community finds the gateway to communicate with the people of the spirit world. If people don’t have a burial ground, it means for us they cannot have a community of memory. Unless they choose to have one - unless they have a sacred space which achieves for them the same purpose - the same fact of connecting with the spirit world, they will not have a community of memory.

Q: That’s amazing that you have the burial ground as a sacred site and as a place where you can connect and reconnect with your ancestry, whereas in our culture, it’s usually viewed as something that’s quite scary and taboo,

and where ghosts hang out, and where people are afraid to go.

K: This country’s young; only 400 years.

Q: True.

DON LITTLE CLOUD DAVENPORT

D: My name is Don Little Cloud Davenport. My English middle name is Edward. I am a bi-racial Native American with African descent. I’m a Seminole Indian of Muskogee language; I’m also Creek and Chicasaw. My African strings come from the lower Sudan region. My ancestors are from the Great Nubian Empire, and so I’m Sudanese as well.

This is phenomenal to me because very few of the African Americans that exist in the United States today know here they come from, basically because of slavery. I’m a very spiritual person. I believe in not so much ancestor worship, but I believe in being connected with the spirit world, and in some sense I’m psychic, but in some sense we all are if we choose to acknowledge it.

I do believe in the Native American culture’s spirit world, as well as the African spirit world which basically are practically the same. Professionally, I have a Master’s degree from the University of Michigan in Education and Psychology. I’m executive director of a non-profit organization in Oakland.

I’m a community activist in some respects and I believe in community and also

in the village concept, which is a community in itself.

I really believe in that. Taking care of one another makes sure you have access to the kind of resources that are needed to make us to live a fruitful and healthy life, especially if you’re talking about at the beginning. So that’s basically where I’m coming from.

I think every opportunity that I get I get into the circle and dance because it makes me feel alive, and it makes me feel I’m in the presence of the people I need to be in the presence of, and then I sometimes get direction. While I’m in that circle, because things come to me, part of that dancing is for that mode of communication.

So I bring with me a background of Native American heritage because I grew up in it, and the African side because a lot of that has been ed down to me as well. And I’ve also been taught through learning and research, that Christopher Columbus wasn’t the first one here; Africans were here way before, and I found that out too by some of the Africans that had settled in the U.S., Central America, and Mexico called Nubians and Mande. They had what they called African Indians as well.

So, there’s a lot to be learned, even from what we’re talking about here. There’s a lot of sharing, and there’s a lot of tears that can be shared as well for the struggle of mankind in general. I’m looked at as a person of deep feeling, and a person of deep thought, and I’m always in deep thought, and sometimes my thought goes in all directions.

I sometimes see it as a gift that I’ve been given from the Great Spirit. I don’t try to connect with the God - I just say, “The Great Spirit” because that’s just part of my belief. But I do believe in a greater force, a greater power than myself, and I

try to get my direction from there, I’d say 80% of the time, and try to learn as much as I can from spiritual people.

Q: I want to ask you something about the way you have remained in with pretty much your entire lineage, and that most - as you say - blacks in this country have been cut off from the majority of it, and are not able therefore to include so many aspects of that lineage in your present daily life. How are you able to do that?

D: Because it was just part of our family; it was just part of everyday living. And also, my grandfather was a medicine person who carried the history with him, but it was just ed down from generation to generation. It’s something that we didn’t hide in the closet because it was something that we were very proud of.

You know in the past, you talk about Africa you think about Tarzan and Jane and all that kind of stuff, and it really wasn’t like that because there were great empires there. So these are things that I was taught from a very young age and I try to this on to my kids. I have a daughter and three grandchildren and I try to on as much as I can.

So if it’s part of your home and part of your every day existence, it’s just there. It’s nothing that we hide; in fact we all talk about it. In fact it was very advantageous for the Black Indians during the time of emancipation and during the time of the Trail of Tears thing, that it wasn’t all that good to be an Indian, so you could just be Black, or Negro as they called them back then, because you were free.

Instead of being shipped off to some reservation they chose to lock a lot of that stuff away and not talk about it anymore. That’s why a lot of that stuff was lost.

Q: I want to talk just a minute about this stick you brought with you.

D: This stick was given to me by my aunt who died about three years ago. She was the eldest of my mother’s sisters and brothers. And she ed this on to me, and what it does was describe our beginning of our clan as much as she knew. There are a lot of symbols on here that I’m still trying to decipher, but I do know that this is the Nubian shield, and I do know this is the mark of a great warrior or a mark of nobility.

(He points to different symbols on the walking ‘stick’) This is the mark of the female with child, and this is the male symbol. Some of these niches on here are ages of time, and these are children being born into this clan. Here’s another age of time, and here’s another female, and this is the marking of traveling across the ocean into Florida, another age of time and then they finally got to what they called at that time Indian Town on the banks of the Okeechobee River.

This that you see here is the mark of an alligator, and that’s about it. And usually when I dance I take this in with me because it gives me a feeling of belonging. This stick, I was told, is 4 or 500 years old. My great great great grandfather had been captured to be sold, and it’s my understanding that he’s the one who did this history.

They took him to the West Coast of Africa to be shipped, and somehow he was able to escape. But he got on a ship and sailed to the Bahamas, and he was there for a year or so then he was a stowaway on another ship to Florida, and that’s how he got to Florida - not as a slave. He settled with the Muskogee Indians, They accepted him into the Black Muskogee Indians, which is another population within the Seminole Nation in Southern Florida.

He lived among them and then he got fascinated by a woman by the name of Coot, and he asked the elders if he could marry her. She was a Native American and they sired sixteen kids.

Q: Wow, what a huge family!

D: This has all been taken from what I was taught by my family. That’s a lot of my history and background traced through my mother’s side. Usually within the Indian Nation specific to Seminole, the kids carry their mother’s name - it’s a matriarchal society where the women basically are the ones who are in charge.

Q: Thank you, Don.

TOM PINKSON

T: My name is Tom Pinkson, and my Huichol name is Tutu Maka Kuka, given me by my spiritual grandmother. My blood tribal ancestry goes back to ancient Palestine, the twelve tribes of Israel. I was not raised in my family in a religious way. My parents were people of deep integrity involved in social justice work all their lives. That’s what I was raised with for spirituality.

I started going to the Sicia Mountains in 1971, mountain climbing, fasting and praying, a continuation of my childhood pattern of going to Nature. That was the one place I could go to feel something very real that spoke to my deeper being.

In my alone time in the mountains started is when I started hearing the voices of the ancestors, the mountains, the spirits themselves, the trees, the rivers and the lakes. They spoke truth that felt healing, felt sane, felt like coming home.

When I’d talk about these early experiences with Caucasian folks, they would look at me strangely, and I didn’t feel much for what I was doing then, but I knew I had to do it because I didn’t know what else to do. It was the only thing that had power for me.

Soon after my first sojourn into the Sierras I met a Native person from this land and he tested me for a while - put me through some hoops. I guess after a while I responded in a way he felt to trust so he picked up what he called the ‘bamboo curtain’ and invited me to come to a ceremony to meet a medicine man. When I met him he took me out into the woods and we spent some time together there.

That was the start of seeing that the way to quench my hunger about learning from the spirit of the land where I live needs to come from the indigenous people of the very same area.

I soon found that the indigenous people had great respect for the forces of nature that were already a part of me. I followed the trail of this learning to the people of Mexico in 1981 where I began an 11 year apprenticeship there with some of the Huichol elders that concluded in 1993 with a completion ceremony in the shaman’s village.

Thus I entered the realm of the mara akame, an initiated, beginning ‘shaman’. I feel like a baby compared to what there is to learn and i am very honored to be here with you two brothers here with the work that you’re doing, and Suresha,

with what you’re bringing through here with this work.

Q: Thank you, Tom.

RECLAMATION OF TRADITIONAL WISDOM

Q: It would be so good to go on a ‘treasure hunt’ so to speak, finding the chest of our ancestors and all the riches therein that we could bring forward again to help unite the circle of life again, in a way that it can truly be sustainable.

Don: You know, a lot has been stripped, especially from the indigenous people of this country because when the Indian tribes were captured and destroyed they took a lot of the kids and put them in missionary schools. And anything they’d been taught, from language, to customs, they told them that was heathen and they weren’t to do that anymore and they started losing all their traditions. They even took the dance away from them because the dance was threatening.

Now there’s a movement within the reservation Indians to get some of that back. They believe in the seventh generation - the kids who are growing up now - so they’re trying to get them active in the old ways again.

Pow wows represent another function of getting back to some of the old ways of traditional dancing because all that was completely wiped away. It was through the elders in their teaching that taught the young ones how to dance and how to dress in their traditional ways. A lot of elders are beginning to get them to learn the various languages from various tribes.

The same thing was done with the African slaves who came here first - they took all their traditions away. So all their communication was basically through singing - any way they could. The thing about Florida during those days is that Florida was a territory - a possession of Spain, so the colonies didn’t have jurisdiction over Florida and that’s why they had such a rough time of trying to get runaway slaves that fled into Florida and assimilated with the Indians.

All the African traditions, ways of worshiping, even in the folklore were African tales that are being told by the Native groups. They were taught those by the Africans. If you look at some Native American beadwork designs and some African designs, they are so close, they are so close!

So there are connections all over and I think that the whole world connects if we let it, and I think that’s our whole problem today: we let pride, success, and greed get in the way of a homogeneous society.

Q: Whatever we’re calling advancement, progress, in modern society, technological ways, or even the mentality here in of competition, ownership, and so forth - those things are not easily going to change, and we don’t have the benefit that you have Kikosa of having a lineage - a community of memory that goes straight back, that’s pure and that’s stayed intact.

We’re not going to have the benefit that you had, Don, of your grandparents ing on so much of your tradition and culture from your heritage so that it remains in tact. You’re working out in the community with children and with the needy to develop programs and Tom you were very fortunate to be able to recognize your own initiations and to find that wisdom in your relations also in Nature.

There are so many in this society, this country, this whole planet who don’t have any ancestry available to them; they’re not going to have an immediate family to on a lineage of a culture that has meaningful traditions, and meaningful rituals that could help re-inspire some of those ways of being that really keep us whole.

So I ask you to suggest to us what the ways are that we can use to re-inspire homogeneity in a diverse culture; to re-inspire initiation, connectedness with the forces of nature, and with meaningful traditions of our ancestry?

D: I think that some of the things that a group of us are doing in Oakland reflects a movement that’s happening all over the United States. We have a group that’s called the Black Native American Association, and we represent various tribes.

“I think there needs to be an exchange of information from the different cultures’ diversity ethnically. There needs to be resources to help generate areas of understanding and misunderstanding among groups. I think once that’s done it will open up avenues for bringing in some of those linkages that you’re talking about trying to restore.”

We’re doing some of the things that you’re talking about: reconnecting with nature, reconnecting with the old ways of craft work, dancing, and we talk about the spirituality. Our circle is always open at every meeting and we burn the sage and put all our sacred objects on the altar.

We go through that for about a half an hour or so to connect with the spirits, asking our ancestors to come in and help us with whatever we need to work

through. We also have our medicine people to work with us. We work with some of the larger Native American groups, and our group is listed in the Native American Directory as a bona fide organization.

So to answer your question, these are some of the things that I and some other people are attempting to do, and thus far we’ve got over 400 or 500 people. This is one way we’re trying to do it on a smaller level, at least.

T: Yeah, that’s wonderful thinking. Great Spirit.

REBUILDING HARMONIOUS COMMUNITIES:

K: The questions you have asked touches upon something which is very important I think for all the people who have come to live in Turtle Island, or the new world. And I feel Tom seems to have found the answer to this question in his own journey.

I think we have answers to these questions, but perhaps it’s still limited, or only among people who are in a spiritual moment; who work all the time to fulfill themselves. It seems for me that perhaps with people like Tom and people who are searching like brother Don here, it should be possible individually, or collectively, to build this.

“What he (Tom) has done is connected with the spirit of the land, and the spirit of the land has guided him to meet the great people who have lived here before us. These people who have lived her before us have shown the way to people like Tom to find new ways and means of rebuilding communities here.”

I think collectively we should use the idea of the middle age as a gateway to rebuild communities, because all the people who have come from different shores have crossed the Atlantic in different ways. And that alone, crossing that river, has forced them one way or another to think about new ways of being when they reach here.

The rest of the people are not looking at this as a paradigm. I hope many people think about it, but if not, it will be difficult to build as a collective. I’m convinced that people who individually find their way to the spirit of the land will be guided by the spirit of the land to a community which has lived here before. And like Tom, they will be people who can build these communities.

Q: Don, you mentioned drumming, and I wonder if just hearing the sound of drums could stimulate a bodily memory or a heart memory, that could trigger something in the collective?

K: Oh definitely. You see, in the past, in many communities in Africa, when you meet somebody, you don’t ask them, “Who are your people?” You ask them, “How is your dance?” So the way they dance tells where they belong. No community was ever an enclave; all communities were open. When one of the people accepts you, then when they come to your place, they dance your dance.

T: The Huichols have a word which I think is a wonderful concept that points to what I think we’re talking about here: Iyari. It means ‘heart memory’. If you go back, all of our traditions - white Scandinavians - no matter where we’re from, if we go back far enough in time we enter the place where we’re sitting around the fire, singing, dancing, in relationship to a universe that we know as spirit.

“But in the Western culture we’ve had so much crap laid on us that’s alienated us, like you said, from our own bodies, our feelings, our dreams, our intuitions, our psychic abilities, the truth that we’re all related. Not just two-legged creatures, but all of creation. So it’s true, and it’s true that what we do to any part of creation we do to ourselves. That’s what we’ve forgotten in our alienation.”

That’s the shamanic roots of all of God’s children! That’s all of us; that’s who we are. That’s in us - that’s deep in our hearts, in our souls. I think when the drumming is done with the intention for healing and opening the heart, then it has the potential to reawaken that Iyari - that heart memory. And ancient memories start to come back and then I say, “I you, I you!” to the rock.

Q: Could each of you speak a little bit more about the communities that you participated in? I think part of what happens also is that even though there is a deep knowing of what feels right and what feels true - you could tell that it felt right. When you heard truth it rang in your soul, in your being. Yet there’s something else that comes over called conditioning, called learning and adapting, and that knowing gets buried, and you adjust to whatever surrounds you - the norm.

So I’d just like to hear from each of you what ‘normal’ is, and Tom you used the word ‘sanity’ as what struck you when you first entered the Huichol community. What do natural and normal looks like in a community that’s actually living in harmony. What does that look and feel like?

T: It’s a pretty rare people that have not been invaded by this viral force that comes from the capitalistic and materialistic greed of Western culture.

What I see in village life today is children having a good time as kids but also very respectful of the ceremonies, the elders. There is a sanity in how children are raised in a context of a ive community.

Another thing is how the generations feed one another, how they work together in a socially integrative way. On a pilgrimage, there’s the grandmothers the grandfathers, the mothers and the dads with their children of a few months, the teenagers, everybody’s there doing this together!

There’s a direct transmission of elders to the young people of the ancestral values, and there’s a grounding there. That’s part of the sanity. They’re a more loving people, happier; they laugh more, they sing more, they dance more, they know spirit’s present in everything they do, and that makes for sanity, real sanity.

Our culture perceives the Huichol as disadvantaged, lacking in the material necessities that are so much a part of our lives in the north. But while we have the material goods, we lack spiritual strength, so many soul-deadened folks walking around alienated from nature both within ourselves and in the natural world.

Q: Not that there’s never any conflict or difficulty, but that within the conflict and difficulties, there’s still this open heart, and there’s still an awareness of inter connectedness, and a recognition that this connectedness unites us all. And that somehow there’s an underlying trust, , anchoring within that understanding or that knowing.

T: The Huichol say we in the North are ‘perdido’ - we’re lost. In our lostness, we are destroying the Earth, and the sun - Father Sun is coming

closer to purify the earth. The Huichol shaman I work with over the years are open with people they trust about sharing their ways, because they think that within that ancestral wisdom, an intelligence about ‘right relationship’ that we’ve forgotten is desperately needed to get back to.

Coming back into my culture that doesn’t really recognize this, in my own need to live in a healthy tribal or community setting, in effect it’s like I went to the center of the non- existent village and banged my drum and sent out a call that said, ‘Hey, I’m in pain here!”

I’ve seen how people were meant to live together in circle where we speak the truth to each other with an intention for creating healthy relationships. They honor the ancestors and the earth, they pray for each other and we each other. I need that in my life.

I was asking, “Is anybody else out there? Am I saying something that has meaning to anybody else?” A number of years ago I did that and people started responding. A community came together, around those ideas, Wakan, and for over 20 years we’ve been growing a community and that community has been growing us.

Q: That’s a real important point, so I don’t want to move away from it too quickly because, what happened for you was that, you put out a call. I don’t know if it was at a time when you had already recognized your interconnectedness, your oneness of all of life or not.

T: It was.

Q: Okay, within that understanding, you put out a call, and there was a response. It can be just that simple.

T: It was metaphorically coming into the center of the village. The community, the village exists in our ancestral memories, for those of us who don’t have the good fortune to be in touch with the ancestral lines the way you two brothers are.

It’s deep in there in a spirit world, and it needs to be brought back to life again; rebirthed here. I think it’s imperative that people come together to learn from each other respectfully. We’re all on this one boat together, and stupidity is in not recognizing, “Hey, the boat’s goin’ down, and we’re all in it together.”

“We all have a piece of wisdom from our traditions, and our abilities to collectively to empower listening from spirit about how to transform the challenging situations that we’re in. We’re not going to be able to do it separately.”

START WITH YOURSELF D: How you define normality, because what’s normal to one person may be totally different to another? There’s a very thin line between normality and insanity.

When you were talking about peaceful co-existence, I just ed reading an article not too long ago about a tribe in Brazil that had been discovered. It was only through cutting down the rainforest that they found these people. Some of them had never seen a white face before. Again here’s a sign of destruction for the healing and balance that they had, just by cutting down a whole lot of trees….this whole sense of enterprise and cutting down trees for their own gain.

This just reminded me that in today’s world, it’s very hard to get back to the beginnings, but if you get one or two to step into the circle, then maybe you’ll accomplish something, but it’s hard to get a mass to change.

I can’t live next door to my neighbor! What am I going to say to the whole huge society? First I gotta find a way to love, and to live with my next door neighbor. If I can’t do that, how am I going to be able to do it with anybody else? The reality as I see it dictates that the world will keep on going like it’s going and probably worse until we get a mass of people who are going to wake up.

Q: Pretty much what you’re saying is, “Start with yourself.”

D: Yeah!

Q: Bring yourself back to wholeness.

D: Yes.

T: Thank you for that.

K: We see that every time - every kind of crisis, there are always rays of hope. In every cycle of humanity, there have always been those who have known life, and who have done their best to continue sharing with others. In meeting Credo Mutwa, my teacher, I have really come to understand this clearly.

This is a person who has spent all his life just assisting other people and not really gaining so much from his knowledge, and if he was, by now he’d be like Bill Gates. What I learned from him is that we are always crossing rivers, we human beings. There are three rivers in our understanding of life: the river of the self, the river of the community - whichever community you have - and the river of eternity.

“We don’t feel that everybody’s conscious of crossing these rivers, but if one can awaken to the consciousness of crossing these rivers, one has achieved sanity, or what we say in our understanding - Godhood. You become a Divine being. “

As of now, I don’t know how one can propose a solution how to rebuild sanity, or to reclaim Godhood. But I think in every community, and in every land where people find themselves, there are people who are finding answers; people like Tom or like Don, or like you. We find answers, it’s maybe just to keep on playing the drum and see how many people come to dance.

I’m not sure if we’ll rebuild the way we originally built - bearing the memory like in Africa; I don’t know, but I think your genius, your creativity will give you ways of rebuilding communities that will help us along the way.

If we happen to lose our memory, you’ll find ways of continuing life. What may be simple as of now it seems to me is just the river of the self where most people are operating, because communities are disintegrated, or maybe coming together in a difficult way because of the lack of sacred sites which would bind things together no matter what.

At the level of the self, and the level of families, it is possible to achieve

greatness, or Divinity. At the level of the self, you can bring in people because other human beings are always our missing link to become Divine. So at the level of the self, it is possible, even when you’re not living in a community, to really smell greatness.

It is perhaps where most of the work has to be done as of now, seeing that the country has never built itself anyway. People are still at the beginning trying to figure out how to live in this land. We know people here who have long life who can guide us if we open up to them.

And people like Tom who are doing that, are providing answers. Even a guy like me who came here in exile, I feel that if I don’t ever go back to Africa, I will end up in the Pine Ridge Reservation among the Lakota people. Perhaps that can become my community of adoption, so it is always possible to rebuild for me, or to achieve sanity or greatness.

T: It’s interesting to me what you said about rebuilding community; that this hunger for community that I think exists among people of this culture. There is a lack of tools, or awareness about how to go about building it, but a tremendous hunger.

I think within our heart-memory there is wisdom-knowing about how to go about doing this; how to live in a way with others that produces healthy people living sane lives of meaning and purpose.

I think if we go down into our hearts and really listen we will get the guidance how to create caring communities addressing the realities of today’s world in a caring and skillful way, with Spirit at the center of all we do.

I think there is a beginning recognition that the corporate world needs to do more than just meet the quarterly bottom line. More people are waking up to the reality that if we are doing so at the expense of the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, it is not really ok.

The natural world, the social world (which is increasing in violence of all kinds), i.e. the environment is feeding back to us that we are doing something basically wrong and the only way to get back to sane and healthy living is to get back to respectful right relationship-based on the underlying understanding that we are all connected in a web of invisible threads.

With that understanding and with Spirit’s help, anything is possible if we open our minds and show up as best we can in the fullness of who and what we really are - sacred, worthy and luminous beings.

That’s the basis of community. It’s one of the building blocks of community. I think there are a lot of things out there to be despairing about, and with Spirit’s help, anything’s possible. At least that’s the hope.

D: Yeah, but the only thing about it is that we have to make sure that our altar is clean.

T: Amen! Yeah.

D: Sometimes it comes in dreams, sometimes it comes in thoughts, and sometimes it comes in what I see. The best place for me to get focused is when I get by the water, because there’s a peacefulness that comes upon me and I get thoughts, and it’s a cleansing. You go to the woods, I go to the

water.

T: I go to the water too! I go wherever I can go.

D: I love to go to the mountains; I do. It’s the getting up there that gets me. I have to work with that, but once I get there, then I get centered, and I see all the beauty. Just to go on top of Mount Tam; once I get up to the top, there’s nothing but beauty there and there’s a wholesomeness there. When you come down you feel like you can conquer the world! But I have to get clean first.

LIVING IN RIGHT RELATIONSHIP

Q: Well, you say that you as leaders, shaman, teachers in your own right, are carrying with yourselves moment-to-moment this clarity and purity of intention in working with others. How do you feel that you can inspire in the corporations, in the educational institutions, in the medical facilities, in the communities even though they are not homogeneous - into this ‘right relationship’?

Knowing that there is hunger; and also knowing that there are people who are reaching out, how do we bridge the gap?

D: I can give it to you from many perspectives. We’ve just recently been doing various aspects of the community in which I live and the area where I live in the most ethnically and culturally diverse area in Oakland. It’s all there. You know there’s going to be misunderstandings from one group to the next, and this one’s going to be getting more than I’m getting, and this

sort of thing.

“Why are they hanging their clothes on the fence instead of hanging them on a rope?” You know, that sort of thing. What we’ve been doing is having a series of meetings where we’ve been trying to bring the people in the community in to discuss their priorities - not ours - on how,

Number 1- we can live together?

Number 2 - what are resources that are needed here to make this community function - like, childcare, food services, all that kind of stuff?

Number 3- what kind of businesses or economy do we want to attract to make the area so we don’t have to go out into other areas to spend our money; so we can use it in our own community to make it flourish? Number 4 - do our schools need to be better? We also want to give the young kids a chance to voice what they want, to make the community better for them.

One of the things we were discussing last night, was the distance between the elders, and the young people. The young people - especially with the immigrants that come in, have those old ways of thinking, and the new ones that have been here for a while in the educational system and are totally captured by their peer groups in their way of thinking, how do we get it so that the elders can understand the younger ones, and the youngsters can understand the elders?

“You see most of the mistakes human beings make, is that the system of information which really guides their life does not connect them to the cycle of nature. So the limited answers found by people who did not maybe think it

through, garble the way people live.”

That’s one of the things that came up last night; we’re trying to deal with those kind of issues. From my perspective, that’s how we’re trying to do it; not on a worldly scale, but on a community scale. So we’re trying the make the community a productive one where everybody can live, be happy, and be peaceful as much as possible.

And also, for those people who are deficient in skills, or education that we have services there to help upgrade, or offer vocational training. So that’s what we’re doing.

Q: It sounds like there is a theme there of co-creation, and people are taking responsibility.

D: Oh yes!

Q: They recognize how one affects the other.

K: For me it seems the principle people have to respect is, “How can we read the cosmos like a book? It means inventing a way of understanding the messages which are coming from the womb of creation; and in the area where we find ourselves, to make these mysteries work?”

Because wherever the human being is, there are receptors there, or an antenna which is receiving messages coming from the womb of creation. How do we

learn first how to connect with these antennae, or try to learn to use these antennae to receive messages or translate them to get a better understanding of why we are where we are, and how we can make ourselves better where we are here.

We can find ways, for example, we live in this area - I think there must be a spirit of this land, of this area - there must be. I don’t know how many neighbors know about this spirit; how we can come together and go and talk to this spirit and ask this spirit, “Where is your shrine here?”

Everybody can come with whatever techniques they have, to talk with this spirit, and the spirit of course will guide each family according to its own needs and its own ways. See, we don’t strive to achieve homogeneity whenever we deal with the spirit world. We understand that every family or every community will have its own needs.

But we also understand that we don’t own nature; that we don’t own life. We are just travelers here. In traveling here, we also know that life, in creating itself, or in the process of creation, has put some forces which can help us to live whenever we find ourselves in a specific place.

It is what seems to me is not done. Here, we don’t even want to embrace a romantic notion of acknowledging the land, or Mother Earth; we just want to be very practical, “How do I live where I live?” and, “Are there forces here which can help to live better where I live, that can help in relating to my neighbors, to myself, in everything that lives around me?”

That should be I think the first thing which has to be done. And the second is, that people who have lived here before us, who have known life before us, must have thought ; must have known that one day we would come to live

here. What are the messages they have left to us? These messages, I think, can be read in Nature.

Until we find these ways, we cannot come in somebody’s house and claim that we built the house and we know it better than the person who lived there before you. Until we find that, I think life will always feel empty here.

Even when I address my ancestors - the first thing I do, I ask the spirit of the land to accept me here and to help me to walk in purity. Then the second thing I do is that I pay respect to the people who have lived here before me, and ask their permission to be here. After that, if the strong group of people or spirits or forces agree with me then I can call upon ancestors.

During the middle age, there were people who sacrificed themselves to bring some people here, so I acknowledge those spirits and ask them if they will accept me here; help me to build my family or my relations. And finally, when these forces which govern life for me here agree with me, then I can call upon the grandfather - try to vibe him from the Bashi land and tell him, “Now Grandpa, you see, I have a super highway; now you can come on and meet me!”

Grandfather will be happy to say, “You know, this kid has done well. He has done his homework. He respects the people where he finds himself, so I will come to him.” I don’t want to be dogmatic, but I think without such an approach acknowledging the forces which make life where you are, one is bound to fail.

So we don’t know the effects of the ways we invent, and we don’t want to force ways on other people, but we think it is imperative to bring all these forces to bear on whatever decision we make in the world we choose to live in.

Q: How would you bridge the gap then between people who have ways of thinking or believing or living their religious lives that don’t include honoring the forces of nature. Not that they won’t, I’m just asking which way would you offer to suggest to them to educate them around the connection with the forces where they live, and to those who have come before them? There are different belief systems also.

RIGHT RELATIONSHIP AND RESPECT BEGIN AT HOME

K: If the people choose a foolish way, in not being a good guest - because all the religions have come to this new world are just guest religions - they are not really the host, life accepts us in whatever way we choose to live it.

Maybe, if like Tom, I have succeeded one day to have a community, I bring my drum here and people come to build the community with me, I’ll just follow the ways my elders taught me. Perhaps we share with people and maybe they’ll find better answers to deal with their own peoples.

“I cannot go to another community and try to be a savior. That’s the first rule we always learn In any community I go to, I will be a good guest; the same way I hope that anyone who comes to my community will be a good guest.”

T: People sometimes ask me about how to have a good relationship with their teenagers because there are many negative thoughts about teenagers in our culture. My thought in response is, it’s tough to start now in the teen years if you don’t already have a good relationship with your kids. Where were you before?

But it is never too late if the intention is there and the heart is open. Kids watch how we live, not so much to what we say. Do we live out our values in our daily lives, in our relationship with them and others, or is it only lip service?

If our kids see us living in respectful relationship with the powers of nature, with our ancestor spirits, with life in all its expressions and with them, when they reach teenage years they will know in their bellies about respectful relationship, authenticity, integrity and we can enter with them into their exploration of who they are growing into as responsible adults.

Q: So again, start with yourself.

T: Yeah, exactly.

BUILDING OUR FUTURE BY THE WAY WE RAISE OUR CHILDREN

D: It gets back to that old Christian saying in the bible, and I can’t quote the bible, but it says, “Let your light so shine.” So, it’s not so much what we try to put out in our universe, it’s what other people see us do. That’s a little secret. Getting back to the kids, children emulate what they see. And if it’s done in home, they’ll say, “Well, you do it, it must be good enough for me!”

Q: Yes, no matter what you say. Right?

T: Yeah, right! I have worked with kids for all of my adult life and i know from experience that they have great bullshit detectors, what they are

interested in is truth, what is real, what has meaning to them in their worlds.

I think without giving up our role as responsible adults who do need to set parameters, values and standards, we also have much to learn from children and teenagers about the adventure of exploring what is truly possible to accomplish and be in this life.

D: It’s like, “The children shall lead us”!

T: That’s another one: “The children shall lead us” - the maturity of the child. Tremendous power there about truth.

Q: Well, the children are going to be adults, and they’re going to be a big part of what creates the future. You mentioned earlier about the Huichol community having this continuum in relationship with all ages, and you just mentioned that the children and the elders are closest to spirit and therefore being two of the most important of the community.

It brings me to this question: Are there ways that child treatment, the embracing of childhood and the elders in our society could be changed that could change the future?

K: Oh, definitely. If you want to change the children you have to start with their grandparents. What can be done? I think the work has to be done at the level of family. Because I don’t think there is any program brought in from outside that can work.

“If families, they themselves don’t come together and find ways of following the elders in the specific families, I don’t think anything can happen, no matter how many workshops and programs you organize.”

This is, you see, the family’s work. In our experience, we found out that when a family is put together there are two blood lines, they engage in that family a spirit who will be in charge of pulling all those people together, and providing access for them to the spirit world. Usually the spirit will be in touch with the elder in that family, like the family tree which we have seen with brother Don here.

For us, we don’t have any doubt. There must be an ancestor or a spirit in the spirit world who is connected to each family, usually, the oldest person. If they fail, the younger person - the children can find it. So we have to begin to learn to look into signs which children bring into life when they are born.

If we detect this, perhaps the only thing we can do as communities is to build a school where we train shamans to help people in detecting this. Whenever it is detected, if a family fails that doesn’t have an elder, we can train these people these young children to grow up to become elders in their families along the way.

This is essentially something which can be done, but if the families don’t succeed in doing this, nothing will happen. I think you have read friend, Malidoma’s book in which he talks about his family, and how colonization affected families in his area. His family survived, and kept the medicine wheel because of his grandfather.

Malidoma describes how his grandfather was able to keep his site of power and it to his father who did not really live afterwards with the spirit from him, but Malidoma came to pick up where his grandfather left off.

K: It is that process which can regenerate the families. I think that Tom and Don will have that in their families. Tom and Don will that tree of wisdom to one child in the family, and that child will inherit something bigger than their mother and father,

If they happen to open their eyes to see what is hidden, they will find ways and means of putting the family together. And when families come together like that, there’s a way to relate to people outside to make a difference.

I’ve been here for a long time. Fifteen years and some time, and never once I’ve been invited into a home where there is a real family. You just ask yourself, “What is wrong there?” You come to a place where grandpa or grandma will be an elder and you come in their home and they tell you, “Welcome! Welcome your spirit!” I shouldn’t complain, but that’s sad! It’s sad when you’re fifteen years in a place and you never come in touch with a family.

You come in touch with individuals, but never a family. We have had a few friends who we sent home to visit our people. Whenever they went home, when they are welcome in our families, one of the first things we will do is to take them to the burial ground of our people. “This is our beginnings. So you too are part of our family.”

When we come here, we always wonder if we meet someone who has been trained to know life, I’m always expecting someday to receive this blessing to be invited to be a part of their family. If not here, maybe I will find Native American people someday who will welcome me in their home as a friend, or as

a relative.

Without that, I feel like I’ve wasted most of my life here - without having family. I have many friends, but not really family. And when you go to a place, when the family accepts you, you become their family. They can have rituals which they will do to celebrate, “Oh God, there is this new friend!” Or when they adopt they have this warmth, the love you will feel! You will know then, “I belong to that family.”

That to me is the way we can rebuild the system of having elders, and children who are going to become elders - through the families.

Don Little Cloud in full Regalia

Note: Don Little Cloud ed away in the summer of 2012.

Kikosa returned to Africa.

Dr. Tom Pinkson has founded an organization called ‘Wakan’ and can be reached via his website: www.wakan.org.

“Wakan is a non-profit, spiritual organization that offers services for healing and creative expression based on indigenous wisdom teachings.

Chapter 2

Kikosa Zanelanga - African shaman

ADAPTING TO AMERICAN LEARNING STYLES

Q: Kikosa, do you want to say a little about the workshops that you offer to the public and the work that you do?

K: I’ve been in a process of attempting to provide for those people who feel they have chosen to know or who want to become shaman - or even say, guardian of their family memory - to provide them with a means of learning to be what they want to be, and perhaps assume the responsibilities which their families have given to them.

This was my initial focus, but then I came to realize very few people really, truly felt they were the guardian of their families. Of course if we are thinking of how to do it, what it will include sometime in the future, it will be a learning process in which we will take people to the continent to meet with my teacher, Credo Mutwa, and learn ways and means of becoming a shaman, or a warrior of the moon.

Q: In your country or tradition, what does that mean to be a ‘warrior of the moon’?

K: The concept means that somebody will receive a light from the world of Spirits, or from who has accessed the land of the mysteries. And this light that they receive, they gently reflect it over people to make their life more beautiful. So it is the ability which a human being can have, of not only connecting with the spirit world, but also making or inventing their artistic ways of making life beautiful on earth.

So it’s not only limited to the fact of healing, which most people associate shamanism with; healing the element of the body. We think also it is possible for the human being to find ways and means of expressing what is beautiful here; like achieving peace with one’s self, finding a natural greatness in all living things, in addition to having access to the spirit world - or what we call the Land of Eternity.

Q: You included before, ‘the guardian of the family’, and that not too many people in this country in particular have such a connection to their entire family, but with the things that you just spoke of: artistry, healing and relationship to nature - did you find people who were interested to know about those things, about those ways?

K: You know, really, in some way people tend to come to workshops with their own agendas. They want to know in a specific way. They are not really flexible, and tend not to show interest in a specific process of knowing. I think it’s what makes learning very difficult in this culture. Or maybe I’m not such a good teacher in the way I try to relate to the learning process.

For me, I was thinking if people come to the learning process, anybody can learn from anybody else; I’m just facilitating the process. But perhaps most of the people who came there came with a different agenda which I did not know well, and it has been difficult so far to find people who really and seriously want to learn in the way the elders have guided me.

I found so far maybe three to four people wanted to learn that way. I think most people want to be entertained, and I don’t want to use a ritual as a means of entertainment. Although rituals can be highly entertaining, I was thinking it may be possible to use a ritual as a way of tapping into the land of the mysteries, or using the ritual as a way of knowing, not as a way of feeling good.

I brings I think the feeling of wholeness - it does, but I will have to rethink how to approach this. I don’t want to sell myself cheap in the way of making knowledge accessible to people. I’d like to work with people who really are serious about their quest. I’m demanding of myself, and I would like people who want to be demanding of themselves.

Q: Is it that you find people in this country or in this culture very programmed already for instant gratification? Is it a time factor, or is it the content that you feel people are resistant towards?

K: I think the time. People are not patient. It seems that most people who come here, because the memory is not clearly established, people feel that maybe they are working against the clock in trying to know. So people who want instant gratification whenever they come to any workshop, which of course we can provide, but it leaves a person empty-handed.

Just when a person comes to you, simply because they want to be entertained, people know they don’t have a nice place to go to feel good. So they come to you and you just have to provide such types of entertainment. It is the meaning to the quest. Maybe for financial reasons once can do it once in a while, but not really on a long-term basis.

BRIDGING THE GAPS IN WESTERN WORLD VIEWS

Q: I found this too in my work as a healer, that people often want someone, as you say, simply to take away the symptom to make them feel good, or to give them something that enables them to not feel what’s actually going on, and there’s a kind of a transference of responsibility. Do you feel what is

needed is education and information about personal responsibility?

K: Definitely. It seems for me maybe, if we can bring people to rise again in what is their duty on earth as Divine beings; if we can provide an additional process which is rooted in our own experience and our own culture. I think that has been a major problem for me also: translating the African understanding of spirituality into an American understanding.

Q: It feels too foreign, you think?

K: It seems to me, yeah. People come because it sounds exotic; something new to see what it feels like. I think the problem we have is that the American understanding of spirituality is not established yet, because people are still trying to understand the world they find themselves in.

When this will be established, for example with Native American I don’t see any problem at all for us. Just like brother Don was saying earlier, it is really easy to find a group with dialogue of mutual enrichment between Native American approaches and African approaches.

So when American has a world view, or when a set of world view will be established, perhaps it will be easier to engage in a dialogue, like the one “EastWest’ which is engaged in here. I feel also an East-West dialogue is maybe onesided, because it is the Eastern which is giving more than receiving. So there is no real dialogue between the East and West, it is the East giving to the West a way of looking at themselves.

USING SYMBOLS AS A FORM OF INSTRUCTION

Q: There’s not so much, I don’t think in of the history of the wisdom of the West that it can give back; maybe a little technology, but even so, much of the wisdom of medicine and all other types of ways of life that make life easier is also from the East, is also from indigenous culture.

So, again, we were speaking earlier about how to bridge that gap, because the history is not here in this melting pot, and it will not come. Is there a way to cross that apparent barrier of difference in order to make what you have more available in spite of that lack?

K: Yes, for my workshops, I think I will be able to in the near future when I come back from Africa. I’ve been doing serious research in the ways of making these teachings in a symbolic form so that everybody can relate to them and interpret the symbols wherever they stand, and how it may meet their needs.

That is a major part of my work now to help people in the beginning of an understanding of the symbolic process, and in looking at all the teachings in a symbolic way. Then you give room for everybody to just interpret them in a way which meets their interest.

Because realities always shift by what you can experience, and if reality can be interpreted with symbols, not concepts which are limited to the person’s understanding of the concept. Everybody can interpret reality. So a good workshop, to me, has to be highly symbolic. And perhaps one in which we’ll use very, very little talking; just using sound, movement, and systems of visualization.

I hope in coming back, after talking with my teacher and explaining to him what I’ve discovered, and see if really it makes sense to him, then maybe I can come back and feel empowered to share. I don’t want to test knowledge on other people; I want to see first if it really makes sense to approach it the way I’m approaching it.

Q: That does sound very meaningful what you just mentioned about making it experiential. So through the senses information is coming in that each one will be impacted by in their own way, and will have your assistance to help interpret that impact. But where they can take the meaning of it out into their lives in a way that feels right and helps to benefit them in their own way?

K: Yes, precisely. That’s the best way of sharing with people, because from their own experience, whatever they tell you will be a major lesson from the depths of their being. If it comes from their being, then you’ll know that truth has found a home, because it really finds a place in their beautiful heart, and they can also just help you to fulfill yourself.

I think whatever things people say from their heart has such an incredible power, and I hope in the workshops, or just teachings, we’ll be able to find that. You know when it means when somebody leaves you feeling whole again.

It’s the same feeling in the classroom when people who have come together to learn, leave there feeling fulfilled and feeling whole. You become like children again who have found a new toy, and that is the feeling I think I’d like to have in the workshops.

Q: Right, although it’s an ongoing process in each life, there is also within each workshop something will be fulfilling enough and useful enough that

they can use right away.

K: Oh, definitely. I think the techniques which Credo Mutwa used in his teachings will definitely help in facilitating that. Our understanding is that everybody has to become a prophet, a poet, just somebody who has an artistic way of expressing their existence. Because then, from our standpoint, every life will be so meaningful, each one us.

Because of the way they are expressing the artistic dimension of their being. If we reach such an understanding, it will be incredible. I think n this culture the problem is that there are a few people who are given everything to express their artistic ability.

None of them are artistic at all, but the fact that they receive a material reward to be expressing themselves means they basically become the only expression of what everybody should be experiencing. If the artist is the only expression of the beauty the human soul can experience in art, what do they know?

Everybody should be able to express that. Maybe they will not all use the same artistic means, but the world is full of possibilities. Using the symbolic framework to bring this out will definitely help people.

Q: Well that sounds very tangible to me, but perhaps the focus of a particular workshop could be to access the inner artist or the inner poet or the inner musician through whatever method or techniques your practices are. Out of that, before the workshop ends, each person would have to offer for the group and for themselves, a creative expression.

And another focus could be a way of listening; a way of getting information from one’s own being, and the practices you would use to inspire that.

K: Yes, I think I would like to do that, but the workshop Mutwa offers is not so appealing because of the limited amount of time which people are forcing it to be. The training process for a real shaman - a warrior of the moon - has to last more or less 5 years. Here people would like it overnight.

In a meeting space, or in a ritual, or in a ceremony, to be able to feel like a shaman would feel after 5 years of hard training. It is difficult; it is not easy the training process to be a shaman or just to be a great artist. People have to understand that they have to work hard to express the beauty in themselves. To provide the ways and means of working hard, I think we’ll have done well.

Q: Do you go to your teacher every year?

K: Yes. Now, I’d like to stay there and live most of the time there, and come here maybe just to provide classes and perhaps to publish a few books. I think if I spend most of my time with him, I will make some progress.

Q: You don’t feel you’re making progress?

K: Yes, things are fine, but I think being there will be better. It doesn’t make it easier, because one will have to work extra hard, but it will be better because whenever one has an experience, if it is beyond one’s understanding one can always ask and find an answer.

Also, my training has not been formal, so to speak. No matter how much people think and all the teachers feel about me, I’d also like to spend years in Africa doing a regular training. I’ve done that by myself which has gone well, but from a formal standpoint I’ve created my own major in African Spirituality, from a B.A to a Ph.D. It’s been an initiatory route, but not the one that I wanted.

I’ve done most of the work by myself, and I’ll be happy to do some of the work under the guidance of my teacher. The feeling in academia is that one can lose humility, and also the approach that we have tends to lose the magic. It is just based on concepts and concepts don’t lend themselves to many interpretations.

That’s why I’m thinking with the symbolic approach, people learn from that standpoint and value that. I’m trying to come up with concepts for interpreting symbolic systems. Which from an academic standpoint may give me a great name of recognition, but I just don’t want to end up being like one of those big heads. I’d like to be in a place where I feel like I’m a child, and I’m learning and enjoying life that way.

USING CODES AND SYMBOLS FOR SHAMANIC TRAINING

Q: So perhaps archetypal symbols that are universal, or that can be?

K: Personally, I don’t think there are symbols which are universal. The Jungian understanding, the European understanding has imposed universality on symbols as a colonial or imperialistic process. You see, every symbol can be interpreted in many ways by people in the same culture.

Q: Right!

K: So, what may be possible is a symbolic literacy. You will have the ability of wherever you find a symbol, to find some meaning or uncover some meaning out of it wherever it is - from any culture. For example, I look at this which was done in Bali (he points to a colorful print on the wall). I will look at what this is telling me and how I can incorporate the meaning which I derive from this painting as a symbol, and see how it can help me to put order into what I’m thinking.

Q: That already would be quite a task and quite a contribution; to give the ability for a person to look at anything abstract or any type of work of art and draw from it meaning for themselves. Or from my point of view in my work, very often I find myself trying to help people interpret the language of their own body, or their own heart, or their own mind - even in dreams those images that come.

I may say, “For your system, for your life, what is that communication, what is it that you’re trying to tell yourself?”

And then, looking out into the extension of yourself in all of life, many times there are synchronistic co-signs; you have a thought, and then, ‘Bam!’ a co-sign in life to validate that, “Ah! I’m on the right tract; I’m going the right direction.”

K: Yes, the universe always responds to you, it resonates with you? That is universalistic, yes.

Q: I mean in of the universe giving the individual confirmation…

K: Yeah, that would be okay. Imposing, for example, look at that doll (he points to a small African carved wooden statue in the room), which has been called the doll of fertility by some people. It can be read in many ways, but if we impose the interpretation I think that was given originally by the Ashanti - it may mean fertility for them, but it may mean something else for their neighbors.

So we cannot use that Ashanti interpretation and give it a specific outlook; I mean for me, if I look at it, it means more than that I think. Even with an eye which is not trained, I see the sun rising imprinting the cardinal directions. If the human being can rise like the sun and see life!

I’m trying to read more into it, but in that type of reading I’m trying to explain how we can use rituals as a symbolic system. One can put oneself in a ritualistic mode, look at an artifact or at a sign, and see what it says to them from the seat of consciousness.

Or chanting; you chant until the mind opens up, and the symbol gives you and bridges your understanding. Instead of you saying, “This is an Ashanti doll which means ‘fertility’.”

Q: Yes, then the door is closed! Finished.

K: The door’s closed. Like, “This is God; believe in God!”

Q: Right!

K: I think this is the way that all people learn at home. I think they never had an idiomatic code. My teacher takes the symbolic process to the highest pitch, because you see he has many ways of reading. He can use what people call divination by throwing the shells; but that’s just one form of reading, there are many ways of reading.

When I went to see him, one of the readings he did was with the pictures I took of the students. He just looked at the pictures and did this incredible reading. It was fascinating to see how he was looking at the features of the people, and through the features, being able to read into these people’s lives and read back in time and forward; downstream and upstream in the rivers of their private or individual lives.

I think it is from him I’ve learned that from him there is the possibility of just using the symbolic process as a method of learning. Because every culture invents symbols to invent itself, and to define the culture in which they live. It depends upon what they find to guide people, and to instruct them to cross the rivers of life. Every culture has to come up with symbols.

I was here failing because it didn’t have symbols. The major symbols they have here are insulting symbols.

Q: Give me an example!

K: You see, the most powerful symbol people have here is the finger.

Q: (laughter) It’s true, that’s quite insulting!

LEARNING TO COMMUNICATE THROUGH THE INNER EYES

K: Most powerful! But you see, if a finger like this can mean so much and move people to exchange blows, there must be something deeper about symbols! If we can now look at everything which is done as a symbol, there is a possibility of inventing more. For example, I’m looking at you - at your facial feature, how you’re talking; how the senses, or maybe the openings are put, and see maybe I can go through these openings, back into your mind, and read what you’re thinking.

If I’m good enough, then communicate with you through those openings, without using the voice. I feel that is possible along the way; as of now at least I’m able to explain how symbols are created to guide people, and how cultures maybe can rebuild symbolic systems to guide themselves. It seems symbolic learning will be the language of tomorrow.

What it will do, it will cut down the empty part of communication, which is speech.

Q: The step, I feel anyway, that has to precede that, is one of learning to interpret oneself; learning to oneself enough so that one has access to the communication that is coming from oneself, and can take what you might present - like this Ashanti doll - and draw meaning from it because one can now listen to one’s own communication from Spirit, or their own heart, or their own mind.

K: That’s a way to start.

Q: Rather than the mainstream status quo; what you’ve been taught to think.

K: Yes, they prevent us from thinking, because you see, they way the information system has been created; it has been created by people who don’t know life. And in their guesswork, they have been efficient in creating access to resources, that’s all. We invent ways of knowing, which not only give us access to the resources of the community but the resources of our being.

I think where we have pointed out mostly today, is how we draw from inside; how to use different techniques to go inside our being. From that standpoint of the mind - when it opens up like we say in our understanding: when the eyes which show what is hidden are bringing in the understanding - it is the third eye; I don’t know what part of the chakra system symbolizes that.

For us it is the medulla of the fontanelle and the occiput are the physical openings which are the channels that have been closed which have to be reopened, not only at the astral level, but at the physical level. Because we assume that when we are born, we are able to see. It is when we acquire the power of speech that we lose the power to see because speech dulls the power of the mind.

Q: It shifts.

K: It shifts, yes - into closing those eyes. So if I can give up speech or just

limited speech, and learn how to read with symbols, I think we can do wonders. If I have a group of people, we can learn together. It adds weight to what you’re doing. I think it’s the most painful part of being alone: no matter what earth-shaking discoveries you make, if you’re not able to relate them to people around you, I think they become like a hive without honey.

So I hope maybe along the way to find people who are serious in their seeking, and together we can share this symbolic process; this learning.

Q: I’m reminded of what Tom said earlier; that you stand in the middle of a community somewhere and beat your drum, and those who resonate with you will come. And 5 years is not really such a long time; I mean, people go to college that long to study things, or more.

Somehow if it’s clear that a workshop is one thing, but a shamanic studies program is another; if you really set up the two so it’s not that you hope to get people who want to be a shaman’s apprentice in the workshop, it could work. People come to workshops with a certain framework in their mind, but the shamanic training is a separate offering.

Maybe you have an introductory evening, or day to communicate ideas about how that will unfold but they know before they come that this is a 5 year commitment; this is what it involves. If you let it be known in this way, depending upon where you , then you can find your people.

K: Yeah, I think it will be a possibility in the years to come. I’ve come in with some Native American communities where we’ve engaged in a meaningful dialogue; where there are elders, or guardians of the knowledge. If we do such a training we will need access to sacred ground. Only through the owner of their band can we have access to that.

Q: There are many; there are so many sacred and powerful site around here, even around California. There are also elders who visit here giving talks and ceremonies. I can you when they come to town.

K: Definitely. Thank you.

Note: Kikosa subsequently moved back to Africa, I assume to continue studies with his mentor. I truly hope he comes back into with me when he returns to the states and possibly offers teachings or trainings here.

Chapter 3

Plamen Tanev – Bulgaria

Plamen was born in Bulgaria, immigrated to the U.S. and has since been working in music, fine arts, healing, and in the psychic field as a modern day shaman.

Q: Plamen, tell us a little about how you began in your profession.

P: I was in a class with a Zen Shiatsu teacher about 5 or 6 years ago and he was an older man who was almost blind - he couldn’t see at all unless you were practically right in his face - yet he pointed to me and said, “You, only you have shamanic DNA; you are a shaman.” I looked at that and I knew he was right, but I never really thought about it too much.

Q: I could see something when I met you. You walk and you carry yourself differently and it’s not because of the Psychic Institute. I knew about the Eastern European roots and I felt that you carry something naturally. Will you talk a bit about Bulgaria and your background and your family?

P: Bulgaria is very interesting. This is like the twelfth or thirteenth Bulgaria. It has been all the way from above Siberia and Mongolia in Russia, as the Hunu Dulu Empire - Bulgara, Bulgari - moving west to Asia towards Europe. With that movement was the great migration. They were fighting the Chinese, the Mongols, so that part of the European race was already being mixed back then.

But they were very shamanic and the knowledge that we have at this point is that Bulgaria was one of the lost satellites of the previous civilization known as Atlantis. So it was one of the satellites as well as Egypt and the Toltecs over here. There were three points of knowledge that we were losing but it’s also still

there.

The Bulgarians spent hundreds and thousands of years moving from East to West in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, conquering in India, the area now known as Punjab. They had an empire there for several hundred years until they lost it with a Hindu prince Chandra coming from the South. So you have a mix of the Aryan and Druvidian races in India.

Q: Is that why they have lighter skin in North India?

P: Yes. Going all the way there then splitting in two and one of the lineages going toward Persia and Egypt, and the other one going northwest to Russia and into Europe much, much later with Attila the Hun. What’s interesting is that those paleolithic races moved East because of the ice age to where Bulgaria is now, thinking they were going back home to the Balkan Peninsula and the Eastern Mediterranean - their lost kingdom.

Some of them were going through Egypt, some were going through the Eastern Mediterranean through Greece, Turkey, and the Caucasus mountains.

Q: It’s way more mixed than I realized!

P: Yes. That covers many thousands of years of movement, and many Bulgarias. One Russian scientist made a map of them all including last Bulgaria north of Greece. We’re all mixed so where does the spiritual, shamanic tradition come from?

We were all shamanic. The initiation was within a different circle than of the Han - the king, warrior, magician, priest. They even had a different word for it then.

Q: That was a mixed role?

R: Yes. Way back the shaman was also the king. Much later it was separated where one was the guy who was ruling the whole thing and he had a helper who was the medicine man or shaman. It was the same in Egypt where the priest was the pharaoh and at some point it became two different roles and that’s when the betrayal started.

Egypt turned dark with a few exceptions of Atnat Khan and a few others who brought the light, there were dark beings working with the dark side. That happened throughout our lineages as well. They did use sacrifices working with all kinds of different beings.

The cosmology was very interesting. Their calendar is still one of the most accurate, appraised by UNESCO - the organization that appraises those kinds of things. So they knew things and you wonder how did they know? There still are the sayings among the Bulgar initiates at the level of the yogis like Lao Tzu…

Q: There was a person by the name, Bulgar?

P: Lao Tzu’s name in China was known as Lao Tzu Bulgar Baiyan.

Q: He was an enlightened master.

P: Yes. It was said that he was not Chinese but of Aryan lineage; not the German lineage - the newer use of the word ‘Aryan’ - but the ancient race, the first beings of Ah Ra, of Ra.

Q: So that’s the root of ‘Aryan’: Ah Ra?

P: Yes, and our Bulgaria was originally Bul ga Ra - the first beings of God. They’ve been switching the letters around from Bulgara to Bulgari or Bulgaria, but all are branches of the original absolute knowledge and the first beings of Ra - Aryan.

Q: This is almost sounding like a Creation story!

P: I’m giving you a bigger picture, rather than just jump into what my grandmother was doing in what we call quantum healing and the special mantras (which they’ll never tell you) used for healing psychically or for physical illness. I’m starting with the big picture then it can be focused down to the psychics, shamans and the rest.

Q: This is powerful because you’re saying that thousands of years ago there were some descendants of God, or a race who felt like they were coming straight from…

P: Yes, very high, high consciousness.

Q: Maybe from another planet, or?

P: Possibly yes. Most definitely some were.

Q: So as it gets away from the source then that general Aryan mentality that ‘we are superior’….?

P: …got distorted, yes. Other beings like the Annunaki and later the Nazis, no that’s not it. We’re talking way, way back, looking and breaking down the code of the mantra and the code of the wording because that’s energy.

Q: Right!

P: That’s why you have all those variations on the name of Bulgaria and Lao Tzu and later Shakyamuni Buddha. Some countries still call us Bulgari or Bogari, like the Serbians will say, “Hey, Bogari!”

Q: How far back are we going?

P: I’m just going back to 2000 B.C. when the Hunnu Empire was above Mongolia and Central Siberia. That was the end, end, end of that civilization. So I can’t talk about the years but I’m drawing a big picture from what I know, my knowledge, from the Bulgarians and Bulgarian psychics.

We do have some of the same words as Indians, as the Tibetans; we’re all over the map. What was interesting was that their cosmology was similar to what neoPlatonistic would be much later in of the spheres, the dimensions, and the connection with Source.

One of the shamanic traditions called Tangra - again Tang Ra - meaning a being or person, the universe, man and God. It was borrowed because the variation with Zarathustra in Persia showed they had the same entity or understanding. It was a total shamanic tradition of Tangra.

I can’t say that it was purely Bulgarian because there were still nations in the East, in Russia and Asia who are using that as their God, or entity, but Tangra was one of their ways of working with things. What they did was to perform rituals and dances - dancing with intention to change cosmological alignment.

Q: To change which aspect?

P: To harmonize something in the solar system or to harmonize a galaxy or to battle with beings who were attacking us.

Q: So they would use dances for this?

P: Yes, dancing with energy and intention. One form of dance was like the dolphins dance, moving in a spiral then turning back - it changes the polarity. It’s a dance yet it’s also energy work dancing with Mother Earth and Father Sky. They would use those dances and all kinds of different

movements sort of like fast or slow t’ai chi but in a group.

We hold hands or belts together with the intention to heal something or to balance something. The movements of singular dancing of a man would look similar to what Pa Kua looks like today.

Q: Do you think Pa Kua is also having that effect or is it a derivation a little bit away from that original intention?

P: My personal experience is that it’s a lot away from. I feel that some of the forms in China are very powerful but there is some lost information because it became part of the matrix consciousness so it’s still within the planetary prison of consciousness. So the forms changed. Just like when you shift from the original yoga to a yoga that’s from thought. It’s become part of a box that’s not really going to free you beyond that same level.

Q: Right, because it’s still within that same box.

P: Yes, just like chi kung or Pa Kua.

Q: And they also have a different intention, right?

P: Yes, I would say that it’s a natural progression. A person could go beyond, but my understanding and my observation is that everything that is ‘thought’ is still within that box. It may be part of our choice of how we chose to evolve, but only the ready ones can go beyond that.

It may be a way of protecting so it doesn’t cause too much trouble, but only a person who is ready or pure can go beyond. I don’t see it as negative, I see it as a graduation.

Q: Yes, like a blossoming or coming to fruition in the soul?

P: Exactly.

Q: Are those dances still being practiced?

P: Yes, we have hundreds and hundreds of dances with music that has very unique beats that no one can understand why the Bulgarians use a more complex metronome structure than the rest. It’s something that the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Turkish also have.

Most of the music on the planet is written in 4/4, 3/4, or 6/8 and that’s about it. Only in India they count in a different way but it doesn’t have the same effect as what you see in the Balkan Peninsula or in Egypt. Egyptians as we do have 9’s, like 9/4 or 9/8; 7’s like 7/8, and Greeks, Turkish, some in Romania, some in Egypt have 7/8, 5/8 and 9/8 which corresponds to the chakras obviously.

Most of humanity works on the 4th chakra, as in 4/4 and the 6th, as in 6/8 so we’re missing the other understandings of consciousness except Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbians have a little bit and Romanians have a little bit. Now we’re going from 5, 7, 9, and 11 and only Bulgarians have music written in 11/8 and 13/8. You don’t get to see that anywhere else.

Q: So that’s of those dimensions?

P: Yes, the 11th and 13th.

Q: It’s fascinating how much of cosmology, astrology, astronomy, calendrics, and music are connected to math and sacred geometry.

P: Colors, vibrations, and chakras - it’s all one package, corresponding to astral, mental, causal regions of Creation. The math goes all the way into scientific understanding of the causal regions of Creation. Then we’re going down from Source into, shall we say the structure of understanding, the cause, the mental/intellectual aspects, the astral/emotional aspects and finally the physical 3-D universe.

The same repeats in the human body. We have the subtle body, spirit, soul, then down to the causal body and down to the mental, emotional and physical.

Q: It’s the future of healing isn’t it?

P: Yes, that’s how we work. Can you hit it at that level, can you make the shift on the causal plane so actual healing can occur?

Q: It’s really also the past of healing because they had this understanding in ancient times of this math/science?

P: They had such a complex knowledge!

Q: I reading something about some Aboriginals who had a group of elders where their whole job was to interact on that level prior to manifestation so they could have an effect on what actually what came in to be experienced by their community.

They felt that if you’re waiting until it actually comes then you’re in trouble if you’re trying to change something at that level by the time it hits that density of form. I think we may be on our way back there.

P: For some of us. I believe it’s a matter of free will. I’m not denying the evolution of humanity as a whole, but maybe we’re improving the lifestyle and not necessarily evolving as a high vibration. Hopefully, but if you compare the consciousness of a person 200 years ago, they’re not necessarily lower vibration than we are, but we have more technology.

There is evolution but maybe just technological, or in a certain domain or department of what creation is all about. We may have more information, but are not necessarily more enlightened than those people.

Q: Yes, not more consciousness.

P: Exactly. They were working with the vibration of the energy field, understanding color, chakras, sounds, the secret words that they used. The Bulgarians would use certain colors and shapes to put on your body to wear

to heal the chakra, or to heal the meridian.

The next day wear a different dress with a different color and a different connection to the planets. It’s the same thing with the carpets and the things they would put on the walls. The carpets would have forms and shapes like a mandala.

The culture was in a way simpler, but they could walk in a certain way to heal something because of the carpet. It’s still here, but they’re forgetting about it. We still have some of that.

Q: In Bulgaria?

P: Yes, but the younger generations are forgetting it. The grandmas and the great- grandmas and dads didn’t necessarily transmit all that knowledge due to Christianity because it was shamanism. A lot was also lost due to the Turkish occupation, Communism and all those kinds of things start erasing a lot of the knowledge.

During the Dark Ages many of the initiates were killed, just as in Europe where there were witch hunts. There was the White Brotherhood, the Bogomils, a lineage going West creating the Rosicrucians and all those groups did come from that.

One of the Bulgarian kings at that time did kill 56 lineages of Bulgarian master magicians. He killed the man with all his kids and their name was Kolobar. They had a different way to tie their hair to show the different levels of initiation. Each level has a name and the hair changes. (He showed photos of the way the hair

was braided for each level.)

There were also birds associated with each level as symbols that show how the energy moves, such as a raven for the first level, next level is a hawk, then an eagle. Then there were numbers that delineated different ways of relating to the wife, the daughter or the son which is still part of the shamanic tradition and working with energy, and a lot of specific understanding about cosmology.

Q: Were they mostly working with cosmic forces, or were they also working in the community resolving issues and working with healing?

P: Yes, both. We still have a lot of healings but unfortunately we’re losing a lot of those techniques. One thing that is still alive we call ‘pouring bullets’. Let’s say something is wrong with you and you go to a healer, she’ll take whatever is wrong with you into the pouring of hot lead or metal into a big bowl of water.

It takes the shape of a form right when you pour it into the water. She reads the energy of the shape it takes and that’s how she gets rid of the issue. Sometime she’ll have you come over more than once until she clears the trauma. They’re still doing that and a similar thing with the wax of a candle. I’ll pour it, read it and disperse the energy.

Q: Once I went to an iridologist and she took a saliva test. She put the saliva on a petrie dish, lets it dry and said that the saliva will take the shape of the molecular structure of the herb the body needs at that time.

It made me think of this lead and because it’s a natural element and everything is

connected and has intelligence, and that somehow when it hits the water it also reveals something about what’s going on in the person.

P: Everything can show what’s going on with the person but certain ways reveal it more easily.

Q: This is their tradition of how to read?

P: This is one way, there are so many ways of healing with herbs, with direct energy. There’s another form of healing the grandmothers use that’s still there called Baene. She uses words without telling anyone what they are, or she can use gestures, or just move away from where you are and use pure energy.

(Plamen began showing more of the symbols used by the healing lineages in a book he had from Bulgaria)

Q: They remind me somewhat of crop circles with all the beautiful patterns.

P: You wonder with each one what it means and what it’s used for, but it’s universal, it’s sacred geometry. It’s really about understanding the nature of things and the energy patterns of the cosmos. The first level of understanding is of the universe, second level is of the galaxies, third level is solar systems. So it goes down from the Absolute, to the universe, the galaxy, and to solar systems.

It’s a lot to cover I know, but the healings are still there; the use of energy,

Chapter 4

Camila Martinez – Tibetan Lama / Curandera

Q: Camila, were you born here in the United States?

C: Yes, in Los Angeles.

Q: And how did that develop in you getting drawn back to your roots?

C: I just felt in retrospect that what has come to me through that root is so very strong! I was born on the West Coast, but I was raised on the East Coast. Then I returned to the West Coast to finish college. As the cosmos moves one, I feel like I was brought back to get to what was really the strongest in my blood line.

I didn’t know anything of my roots at all - nothing! I didn’t speak Spanish, I didn’t know anything. Then it just started to unfold for me. The link is definitely the language. To receive the knowledge in Mexico, first you study Spanish, and then once you have a grip on Spanish, you start studying the native languages and try to understand through native languages how they conceive of things.

For example, where my teacher lives less than 50% of the people speak Spanish - they speak a native language and this is the way it is in many places in Mexico. Well, in Latin America Spanish is the lingua franca, but other than that most people speak their own tongues. So in order to study in a deeper way you have to somewhat have an ear for language and start to cross this boundary of understanding.

It’s the same in Tibetan or Hindu traditions. You have to study Sanskrit; you

have to be able to hear it, you have to be able to chant it, you have to be to under-stand - that’s part of the process. I believe that now for us Westerners anyway. It’s something that’s kind of a double whammy for Western students because we’re mono-lingual.

With the English language it isn’t something that’s thought of as important, but in the University you may get one or two years where you’re taught romance languages but if you want to go into any deeper scholarship you have to really have a command of Latin and Greek, and then German. Germans wrote more, and the Russians did also.

Q: Yes, that’s true that the language demonstrates the inside of their perceptions of the world. I know that all the time that I spent in India I was missing a lot, and the Indians would tell me too, because when the teacher would give discourses certain times of the month in Hindi, they would say, “My God, the vocabulary around feeling is so much richer in this language that I wish you could get it!”

C: Yes! It is that way, I think always. The beauty is in the studying of another language. Just take the leap and go for it!

Q: Tell me a little about how your healing school; how did it get started, what do you teach, and what’s your method of instruction?

C: My teacher, Doña Julieta did this ceremony down in Big Sur, unannounced; I didn’t request it from her, and she just said, “Okay, I’m going to do this, and tomorrow I need you to have these elements together.” The things I needed to gather for the ceremony were very difficult to find and this ceremony had never been performed in the United States before.

So lucky for me I had some allies, and I requested my allies to gather the substances while I was taking care of her, translating for her, and attending to details. There was one other major teacher present at the ceremony down in Big Sur.

Finally we were on the plane back to Mexico and I said, “How long will it take before that energy kicks in, to bring the Institute of Traditional Medicine into manifestation?”

She said, ”About two years.”

And it was two years from that date that things started to bubble more seriously and I was drawn up to this area and started to look for the land where the Institute would be. During that time I went down to Mexico to search for Tlakaelel (a spiritual leader) and sometimes I found him and other times he wasn’t there. All things in working with these people are on a miraculous level; it’s not on an ordinary level.

Anyway, I made many, many requests to Tlakaelel to get him to come because he travels extensively. He’s a sundance chief and he travels a lot. One of the functions of the Institute has been teaching, and the other part is to bring elders to come teach authentic wisdom - doctors, curanderos, and people like that.

We are in a really special place on the planet; not just in the United States, but on the planet. We have so many wisdom beings coming through! In olden days, just to get near these medicine people, a person had to go through major difficulty just to get there. Usually they lived in remote places! But nowadays, we literally just have to hop in our car and travel a little distance, pay a few bucks and you

get a chance to be with them. It used to be the cost of a very long, very arduous journey not knowing if you’re going to make it!

Q: Yes, we’re very lucky! Thanks for telling me about him.

C: In relationship to studying traditional Native Medicine, their focus is very different; their way of teaching is very different, the requisites for students to study is very different; it’s another way of learning. That is what we do at my kalpulli, we study in a native way, and the name of our school is Kalpulli Tonantzin. So getting back to the roots - the origins of all this, how this manifested, calling on her original energy to bring this forth, and so the school is named after her.

That name came to me in a special way, because I was wondering what to call the school, and since this is a very goddess oriented, feminine energy oriented manifestation of what the knowledge is and how it’s coming out, I decided to call it after the Goddess Tonantzin, who is the mother goddess of this continent. Her sacred site is in Tepeyac, Mexico.

I’ve gone a number of times on pilgrimages to her place. It’s important to visit power spots. Because here we are in the Americas and very much focus is going off of this continent in of energy, sacred sites, and all of that and what is being greatly overlooked are the actual spots of power here.

This is what I’m working to reconnect. I’m saying, “Hey, look right here!” because we’re in her place. And you know California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah is all Mexico; all of it.

We are, by force of being in California, we are in her land. The last time I saw Tlakaelel he had been just been doing a bunch of research on the archives in Mexico City because he works a lot with protecting sacred sites so that the government doesn’t destroy them digging where they shouldn’t be digging. Because he is a recognized spiritual leader, he has access to church archives where a lot of this information has been kept in dusty corners.

He told me there was supposed to be a treaty between Santa Ana and the United States which ceded this portion of Mexico to the United States, but that treaty does not exist. There has never been found a written piece of paper that ceded that land in Mexico to the U.S.

Q: Interesting!

C: Yes!

Q: Somebody could make a stink about that.

C: That’s what scholars like Tlakaelel have been doing. It’s interesting that they call this the United States. The scholars hear things about ‘our boundaries, our frontiers, and our borders’, but it’s more like, there’s no borders between the native peoples; we’re united all the way through. We have lineage; we have lines of knowledge that we all maintain. In relationship to the goddess and her energy, we are in the field of the Tonantzin here.

Q: There’s so much about the way your process is unfolding that speaks about the differences already in the ‘non-native’ approach to life: just in the

listening, the way you would go about starting anything; the way you would even decide whether or not to start anything or where to start it, to be conscious of that continuity throughout life all the way into spirit.

That kind of fragmentation that is imbedded in non-native thinking creates so much of the destruction throughout life. And it’s interesting that you started out saying that even holistic medicine is done in an American way.

C: Oh, definitely…without truths back to the native ways. All they do is lip service. That’s what the disgusting thing is now, that all these people that used to be hipsters and have gone through their hoops and gotten their letters after their names and are forming associations and all this stuff; they’re not even letting in native peoples or people that are recognized practitioners trained in these native styles.

Q: Establishing for themselves what they think is standard or efficient?

C: Right; continuing the status quo under the guise of holism. Holism implicates everybody - the whole rainbow, not just one color. It includes all under the rainbow. I think it’s something that some people are starting to figure out, that overlooking these other colors in the rainbow that have really deep roots, that have the real knowledge, they’re missing the point completely!

Really getting into Traditional Native Medicine - knowing what it’s like to sleep in the dirt; knowing what it’s like to shiver in the cold, knowing what it’s like to be bitten by insects, to cry, to sweat, to labor….it’s another way. I don’t think it’s for everybody.

Q: Yes, and also there’s a certain integrity that goes along with it, and integrity itself means wholeness, so as an integral part of offering healing, especially if you’re calling it holistic healing, when the person themselves remains sort of untouched in the process - if their own being isn’t transformed in the process, if they’re not coming from a place of wholeness….

Well, I don’t want to assume or presume that everyone is not coming from that place - but in general, as you were saying, the teaching, the school, the way the students are treated, the training itself is so different, I’m just presuming a training in medicine or healing in the native way is so focused on the student as much as whatever information you’re supposed to be taking in.

I’m just assuming that it must include the way a student hears, and sees, and senses nature; whatever these plants are and their spirits that he’s going to be working with.

C: Yes, the focus is on the student, but also the essence of any of this, be it Tibetan style, or Native style, American or Mexican Native style, the student reaps the benefits of the amount of energy they put into the teacher; how much time they’re willing to spend with the teacher; how much they’re willing to sacrifice for the teacher, or for the teacher and their family.

That’s how all this works. If you go to any of the olden times, people would go and really live with their teachers. You study any of the biographies of some of the really great healers, or lamas or medicine people, they spent a long time serving the household of their teacher. That means you are doing whatever work is necessary for them; whatever they say they need - that gets done. Not just doing the work, but putting all of your resources at the feet of your teacher.

I feel like in Western life, to begin with, most people have no clue of how to approach a teacher. They have the idea that in a Western education style, you pay your money and you sit your butt in a seat and you get taught. There’s no real exchange; the only real exchange is the paycheck the teacher gets from the institution that is paid by the tuition of the students, which doesn’t even all go to the teacher.

Much of it goes to the istration of the business of universities. It has nothing to do with direct renumeration of the knowledge holders; it has a lot to do with keeping huge buildings open and paying for the cost of all of that. In the case of the University of California, of which I am an alumnus, if one delves a little deeper into the university’s business, one finds that they are directly involved in the U.S. nuclear bomb R & D program.

Q: Okay.

C: And students are having to pay a huge amount of money to get this education. The students that they’re turning out, especially the graduate students , who are supposed to be taking care of the rest of the populace, when you’re dealing with healing work, psychology, medicine, biology or any of that are mostly Caucasian.

If you look to the percentages of the rainbow who are being allowed to study in a graduate capacity, Asian Americans have the highest ission rate to grad schools in the non-white status. Hispanics are only 5% or less for being itted into grad schools, not to mention undergrad. Black people have 3% ission into grad schools. Now where’s the equality in this, I want to know?

Who’s taking care of the people of color that don’t have any money for health care who don’t have ways of escaping their poverty. Even if it was a completely

racist society, even if the complete white powers that be were able to engineer some possibility for health for the lower classes of people, which are the colored peoples - red, black, and brown in this society - at least they would put through decent percentage of the brightest to minister to the populations, but this is not happening.

Q: I was a school psychologist for a while and I really had to do so much work to try to turn that process of abject discrimination around. Clearly, the ones who would wind up in special classes that would prevent them further from getting a decent education were children of color.

C: Right.

Q: And even within the same testing instrument, if I would give them the test they would score much higher than if a white psychologist testing them. Just my presence would have an influence.

C: Yes, it makes a really huge difference. I think you have to realize that a lot of young ones that have any brilliance at all and are in a public education system become very bored very fast. They ask a lot of questions, and if they don’t get the attention, they act up and wind up in special education. That’s how it goes.

Q: I just wonder if it wouldn’t be a better idea since this situation is not going to turn around very easily, to foster indigenous wisdom and create learning situations that are from these roots for indigenous people and their children, or are they too powerless anyway?

C: Some of this really is happening, but it’s in pockets; it’s not wide spread. It’s one thing on elementary and secondary level. It’s another thing on undergrad level, and yet another thing on grad level. America’s trying to fit everyone through a certain hole in order to fit the picture of what a functioning society should look like. It’s giving lip service to diversity, but not fostering serious diversity in the educational system to make brilliance shine.

Q: Yes, to evoke rather than impose.

C: Yes, I think that’s where it comes down again to the students. Okay, so you’ve gone through the system and say, “Excuse me - hey, this isn’t working!” So where do you go to learn? And if it’s your good fortune to come across an authentic teacher, and you have the awareness that you’re with an authentic teacher, and you have the personal power to say, “I’m going to study with that person, whatever it takes!” That’s where students are being called to.

I don’t think it’s any different than in the old times either, because everybody has different talents. Not everybody is supposed to be a healer, and even within the healing arts there’s a huge range of talents, specialties. So the I think the job of the student - the seeker, is to find who those authentic teachers are; look around and also check very carefully the background of who you want to study with.

We’re not taught this is Western education, we’re taught to pay your money, sit down, shut up, listen, take the test, get your grade, go to the next, you know like that! I had two apprentices who were in their twenties, and for me they were like little jewels. I saw their light and I loved it! I used to spark them to challenge them, I loved to put enigmatic questions to get their little wheels working.

I loved their spontaneity, their good heart, their expression of their being. One of them really had a gift for wacky humor, and she surprised me with her spontaneity. I love spontaneous people - being one myself - so having that for me is like icing on the cake.

Q: Right!

C: I’m starting to really understand what the elders have said in the past that they don’t have people to it on to. There are very few young ones who have that quality to want to get it; to know there’s something to get!

Q: Yes, to want to get it.

C: When I was younger than them I started to really understand that it’s a matter of personal power. If you have that personal power, things are going to come to you on your path, but you have to swim through many currents. I always think of salmon swimming upstream.

Q: Yes, to literally flow against the mainstream.

C: And to have come up into the tiny rivulets to find really where home is. Of course when you get to a certain place, it’s all home. You have to go up the rivulet, you have to sniff out that rivulet, you have to have a good nose, and many times people go up the wrong rivulet, you know?

That’s the nature of the spiritual quest. There are many byways and there are

many pitfalls and you have to learn how to go through those and go through dusting yourself off and getting up and being disoriented and getting back centered and going for it again. That’s the process!!

Q: How was it with you and Doña Julieta and how you happened to find her and talk a little bit about how that relationship was established for you over time, and what it means in that tradition to be a curandera or a shamaness?

C: I was taken to her on my very first journey to Mexico when I was searching for my roots. Again, this was all spirit guided. I was taken by an ex Federal policeman in Mexico. We got into her village, which at that time was about a ten hour drive from Mexico City into a restricted area in the mountains of Oaxaca.

We had to sneak by soldiers in the middle of the night, and outsiders were absolutely not allowed. I was in a special realm; I was not in an ordinary reality place. All of the native people had very sparkly energy. They had this way about them; it was very different than we are accustomed to. The way they looked you in the eye, the transmission of eye energy was so strong, they laughed a lot, were playful and had an unusual quality.

And they were very small; that was the thing that really impressed me, that they were so small. I’m 5'2" and I was very tall for those people.

Q: Oh!

C: As a matter of fact I’m much taller than Do a Julieta and when you see us together she was very tiny. I always thought that was a perfect case of

where ‘when the student is ready the teacher will appear’ and I was taken to her. And so I didn’t have a clue who she was, what she did - nothing!

We stayed at her house; there was nowhere else to stay; there was nothing up there - nothing! The roads were extremely bad getting there; it was very dangerous. We traveled through the mountains in bad weather. The roads were hardly roads, they were just tracks. Some of them were full of mud. You didn’t know if you were going to make it; every time you went there, you didn’t know if you were going to make it.

There were torrential waterfalls running down rock walls next to the road, with water running over the road, and a lot of landslides. It was very difficult going.

Q: How old were you then?

C: I think I was 24 or 25 years old. So anyway, as it came to be, she invited me to return and I did for many years after that. I began my apprenticeship with her, and it wasn’t something that I asked her; she chose me. She saw into me how I had that ability, and I didn’t even know it. My apprenticeship lasted for 20 years.

Q: Perhaps you can it on somehow (through the school). What does it mean then for someone to be a shaman? What does it look like in that tradition?

C: It’s a big responsibility. In her tradition, she would be the person that everybody would run to.

Q: Right.

C: It wasn’t that she was an esteemed member of the community because the people were ignorant, so there was the whole level of, ‘she’s the witch’. So it was a difficult situation! Watching what happened to her and what she had to go through I feel like I’ve been spared, because I’m not living in a community like that. I can live quietly.

We’re in very, very special times now. I think of people my age that have been doing the work for a number of years and seeing the elder’s status, and now that Do a Julieta’s gone, seeing it - I mean I never even dreamt much how this would be. I did have a vision of her dying years ago.

Today the young people have weight on their shoulders that they don’t know about. I keep trying to impart how very essential it is to recognize that the elders are dying fast, and they’re not getting to a ripe old age either. Many are dying in their mid-sixties. My teacher died at 63, not like these who are getting up into their 90’s, or like the some of the wonderful Hopi elders, like Grandfather David who lasted to be well over 100 before he ed.

So you know, I think you have to stay hungry; you have to be hungry for that knowledge. You have to have insight to know that it’s a really important thing; and you have to have insight to know that no matter what is going on around you, you have to give it all up in order to get it. That’s how it is with an apprentice. There’s no job that’s too big or too small to do. Actually if you’re with an authentic teacher, there are huge projects you’re involved with.

Q: Probably always seeming like a little more than you can handle!

C: Actually, when you’re in that process, you understand that together, as a group you can accomplish amazing things!

Q: Yeah, and it’s not you accomplishing it, it’s just kind of being available for something to happen and watching it as the pieces come together even though you can’t see it at the outset, you don’t know how it’s going to get pulled off, but it does.

C: Yes, and a lot of people are not accustomed to working in a group, so they’re quite isolated, through no fault of their own. Once you start working with an authentic teacher you come to understand that other people who are being called to the same thing. A lot of times people don’t have the skills, but in the process of doing the projects you learn the skills, and people become good at some of these things that they learn.

Q: Right!

C: Of course it’s a spiritual process, but there are other very utilitarian practical things that people learn to do around this.

Q: Do you find apprentices showing up? It sounded like at this point there are students completing the cycle of learning and graduating and that might be the end of their program. But do you also feel that there are students being drawn to you who are interested? Are they aware of the knowledge you have?

C: No, most of them aren’t. There are some that are being drawn; some who are completing one year who are asking to continue. But it isn’t that I’m out searching for students - not at all.

Because it’s easy to fill up a bunch of bodies in seats, it’s not easy to turn out a wisdom holder. Even on the outset of my program which is 5 years - that’s a very short time. To really go through serious studies is 9 years, 10 years. You’re talking language, sciences, calendrics, astrology, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, yoga, meditation…. we’re talking at least 8 branches of study.

Q: What is calendrics? Calendars?

C: Studying how time is kept, and how to work with different calendric systems because really what you have to study is how the ancients viewed time; how they kept time, how they viewed time and how they looked at the celestial bodies in relationship to time, and what that implicates. It’s also understanding the difference between linear time and non-linear time, and how to live in non-linear time.

This is all a process of that study. So it’s a whole different focus in learning. Also, within the medicines is another huge field, because you’re dealing with animal, mineral and plant medicines, diagnosis, being able to prescribe medicines if you will, and knowing what to do; and not only just on those levels, but also on energetic levels, because the kinds of medicines we work with are spiritual medicines which are very different than other medicines.

That’s why on these deeper levels, the traditions - that’s why many of these psychiatrists, psychologists - people who have been in the works for a very long time - now they’re kind of waking up in their old age and looking to the native elders to see what they’ve got.

Going through the labyrinth of their Western knowledge and saying, “Hey, we better look at some of these old guys and old ladies sitting there; we better look at some of the wisdom keepers, some of the medicine people!”

I mean, don’t you find that’s a trend within psychology, psychiatrists? Many are going back to traditional native healing ways? Looking into healing through trance, healing through music, through chanting, energy, and…?

Q: That’s right; it is becoming more popular, especially as some of these ways become more available and some of the non-traditional fields are being allowed in. I feel that it’s critical as a study, but the implications before and within that way of studying is the way of being that also sustains a type of harmony on the planet; a way of living here that works with every other living thing.

And the return is not just a fad or a way to get information that might be more useful to get rid of a sore throat or something; you know what I mean? It’s more like it’s a way of noticing who you are, of re-recognizing, of ing… that is critically needed right now.

C: That’s the crux of the teaching: is ing. That’s what’s happening all around us; that’s the conspiracy around us - a conspiracy of forgetfulness.

Q: Truly- It’s intentional!

C: Exactly!

Q: To displace understanding, to displace community; to displace - to kill the spirit, actually.

C: And to downplay the knowledge of our elders; how much does our society value our elders?

Q: To cut off all sources actually…

C: Having situations where youth, or even young adults have time to hang out with their elders. Whether it be their parents or their aunties and uncles or their grandparents. This is not something a lot of people have the opportunity of doing and this is what provides the richness of life and understanding, is being able to have quiet time where their elders will on what they have. Creating that time, and taking the time; young people are not being taught that.

Q: They don’t see the value in it.

C: Their family situation and the evolution of society here - part of that is to separate so there isn’t that connection. The thread is being severed. That’s our job; to keep that thread, to it, and to weave it. That’s what we’re doing, we’re learning to weave, and that tapestry is in brilliant colors, brilliant colors! Brilliant, radiant, luminescent colors and it is an exquisite, incomparable, tapestry that we are continuing to weave on. It’s there. We’re continuing to weave it. It’s a cosmic tapestry, and that’s what we’re here to do.

Q: I have a sense that there is a reaching out, a seeking, amongst those who don’t know where those sources of authenticity are. Hopefully they are being made aware of not only those invocative and evocative ceremonies, but that it can also start triggering a response in the cells so the reaching can turn into a full-on, “Wait a minute! I know there’s something else. I know there’s something missing!” and then know exactly where to plug in.

I just have a feeling, and I know it’s not just me. The more I talk to people, the more I can see it coming into the hearts and minds of people that this needs to be resurrected, you know what I mean? The seeking needs to be anchored into whatever other forms of spirituality are coming in right now, so that they can be anchored in traditional forms of wisdom.

C: We’re going through a…. I mean, this is not a localized phenomena that’s happening; it’s a planetary phenomena. The more that I travel, the more that I see and talk with people and I realize that Spirit is tapping on the shoulders big time of a lot of people. Many people are going through huge awakenings, huge just coming to grips with that there’s something bigger.

The things that I think are most valuable to - again coming back to the ing aspect - that it’s a really huge circle; we’re a really huge family, and when you feel alone, just think of the large family. Just see that big circle of light, that big circle of helping hands all over the planet. Many, many, many, many! Not just thinking about where you may be in whatever isolation in a very small community you may be interacting with, but really understanding that there are huge forces at work here.

And it’s beyond government, and it’s beyond money and it’s beyond all of this. Things haven’t changed much through time as far as the ‘haves’ having and the

‘have nots’ not having, and the hunger for power and greed - that’s the same as has been going on for a long time because it’s just some of the poisons that humanity has had to deal with for a long time.

But where we’re being called is to warriorship. That is part of the painful part of ing, because when you really wake up and see what’s needed, the picture’s so huge, and you realize that you have to convert yourself into a warrior; that you’re being converted whether you want to or not.

There are many people who feel they’re not strong enough to hear the call, or strong enough to heed the call, or strong enough to put into action what you’re being shown to do. But that’s our job now, and anyone who thinks it’s any less is completely wrong, because we’re in crisis.

The Maya elders tell us that this is the time that we must harmonize and become in balance. It’s up to each one of us.

Note: For many years Camila ran the Institute for Traditional Native Medicine, and is currently heading up the Mayan Seed Ark Project which focuses on the following:

‘The Maya prophecy advises that the time will come when the natural resources that we depend on to sustain life, will be severely decimated. Native people have known and survived past threatening climatic calamities because they applied the Precautionary Principle. On a basic survival level, native people throughout time have demonstrated the importance of saving heirloom seeds.”

For more information or to this important work,

visit www.themayaseedarkproject.org

Chapter 5

SWEET MEDICINE NATION

Choctaw/Cherokee

Q: I’d like to start by you talking a little bit about who you are, where you were born and your background.

SM: I’m Sweet Medicine Nation, I’m a mixed blood of Choctaw, Irish, and French descent. I was born in Chico, California, based in Oahu, Hawaii, and came back to the mainland when I was 19.

I began studying with the Grandmother Pearl. Her name was “Speaks for the Earth”. I learned my people’s way of mysticism, or demystifying the human existence and our part on the earth and especially in preparation for this time in 2013. I also studied with my grandfather whose name was Bill Cover.

My background is that I have been an alternative physician for many years - now retired from that - and my love, ion, and mission are to on the wisdom that is innate in all of us as indigenous people as is in Mother Earth. What comes to the forefront in that quest as how to do that is through rite of age that are lacking in today’s world.

Q: Great, please say more about that.

SM: I do birthing ceremonies, naming ceremonies, rites of age for boys and girls, men and women, vision quests, I marry people, I bury people - I help them carry their elders or family who over. I do a lot of traditional Native American healing ceremonies, and a lot of awakening the Earth in the different locations that I travel to and re-wake up a place like a building, someone’s house, or a piece of property.

I believe all of those things are very important and our future, obviously, is with the young people because what we have as wisdom keepers we need to on. It’s not meant to hold on to it and take it to our graves.

For an elder, it’s a critical time for us to on this wisdom we received that we hold inside of us so that the next generation has the manual to go out into the world and do something so we don’t become extinct, and so we don’t go to sleep.

Q: Thank you for sharing that.

SM: That’s what’s happened. People have gone to sleep in this technological age and are forgetting to keep the fire - the spirit fire, the human fire - alive, and we become so mechanized that we are more like dots and dashes rather than smiles and sunshine. So what I help young people is that Nature is their Mother, and the environment of the sky, water, air is their Father.

They respond almost instantly. Adults look at me for a while until they get the gist, “Oh, I see - this is a lie.” Children will immediately say, “Yeah, what can we do?” They immediately take it - not like fantasy - they take it as the truth. They know it, they just haven’t been shown it.

Q: I’d like you to elucidate on some of the things you’re saying because it sounds like it would be valuable to have some of that tradition ed on right from the beginning.

For example, with your name and how that starts to shift your perception about things. Can you say something about your naming ceremony, where you get the names from, and where the inspiration comes from?

SM: What happened for me was that a friend would say, “I’m going into labor,” or, “I’m pregnant,” when they’re about 4 or 5 months along.

Spirit gives me these names and I hold onto them sometimes for a year not knowing who they’re for. The name comes, and I see the person before I’ve met them. When I get the phone call from a mother asking for a spirit name for their baby, the name comes into me in English, the meaning comes with it and I see the purpose of the child’s life.

I do that also with adults. In today’s society we have what we call a ‘Christian name’ that everyone calls us by and it’s approved as our legal name, but Spirit has another name for us. I didn’t understand it when I was young, then I was trained to know by Spirit and by my elders, “That’s the person’s name and you should tell them!”

The naming ceremony is a very beautiful ceremony much like being at the birth of a baby where a song is sung just for them, which is their name. They’re recognized and heralded with this name.

On the day I do the ceremony if it’s for an adult I usually do a purification ceremony or suggest that we do a sweat lodge to prepare the body to receive what is already hovering around them. I have them invite their family and anyone who knows them and I emphasize that to have a name by Spirit is to be recognized at a different vibrational level.

It shouldn’t be a threat for them to change their name, or viewed as something that changes their personality, but it’s good to know that we do have other names. At times in different tribes the Spirit name is kept secret and you don’t share that name publicly, it’s something only you would know that’s whispered into your ear.

In my way I think it’s important for everyone to know what their Spirit names are and I encourage the whole community to echo their name back to them in the ceremony that we do. It’s not about giving up a Christian name or changing a name legally, although some people do.

It’s to know that, “I have a purpose and my name and my purpose go simultaneously with the possibilities in that direction if I choose to go that way in my life.”

It’s like going to a baptism where they get washed, they have a new name and are dressed in new clothes with feathers tied on them and it’s a very beautiful ceremony that the whole family participates in.

Q: That’s really beautiful - especially the part where Spirit’s purpose for that life is embedded in the name, and in realizing that the catalyst or inspiration for setting yourself out in that direction can happen at any time in a person’s life.

SM: Right. With a baby, you just look into their hands and their feet and see the energy. With our babies we count many months out from gestation and we say that in the first year of the baby their feet don’t touch the ground because they hold an imprint from Spirit first. You give them a ceremony to touch the ground and we call that their first year but it includes the gestation period.

Q: I was wondering why they were carried so long and we were assuming that it was just to honor that bond with the mother and to give them protection and safety. Yet I wonder how much stronger in their identity and how much less upset-ness and crying there would be if the babies were simply held a lot more in the early part of their life.

S: Yes, it’s true though that the bonding with the mother sets the tone for our security on the earth.

Q: This part that you added about the imprint from Spirit being in the feet is a whole other layer - a deeper layer that’s good to hear about.

S: We have the ceremony of putting the feet and the hands on the earth which is giving the child back to Mother Earth and having them not be just a Spirit Being. When little children come in they float in water, then they’re held, and it’s magical. When they finally touch the ground they are governed by the gravity of life. They’re here, we their journey but without knowing, “What is their purpose here?”

Spirit is still holding them to wherever their fate lies so once we offer them to the earth and we offer them to the sky. The next rite is for the child to go on vision quest so we go and ask that of our Mother and Father Creator, but without knowing that the Earth and the Sky are also their grandparents, the child is a product of the environment they live in. So they look to adults, they look to their peers, but it’s really up to our souls which already know. The child or the person grows up being a little insecure as to “What is my place here?”

So they model society by taking a list of careers and saying, “Well that sounds

interesting to me”, but they really already have a soul purpose.

They come here to bring their specific ingredients to blend into the world family and take their place. Everyone is waiting for that in the indigenous culture, but in today’s society we just want them to get into the work force and be successful. A lot of people are dissatisfied with their schooling; they go to school to get degrees but then they feel, “This isn’t what I wanted to do. I’m not happy in my heart or my soul and I feel sick.”

A lot of people are walking around with this sickness and still trying to achieve, but they’re not aware of what Divine plan was set in motion by them and the Creator to give them their purpose. So they feel the loss or the lack of spirit driven fire - the central fire.

Q: How young would you recommend someone to be to have that Vision Quest?

SM: The youngest I put children on the mountain is eleven years old. In our society today, parents are very reluctant to let them go for four days which is what we do for adults, but I do an overnight for young people who are thirteen and then they’re mentored.

If they’re serious about doing a full vision quest I mentor them and their parents to them for a four day four night event, but these days it’s mostly the adults who want to know what their purpose is so they can start over.

I think it’s around fifth grade when the parents can begin to let go. Once the parent understands what the child is undertaking the parent goes through

something also just being a part of how brave their child is.

They go through what the parent would have gone through at four months when the baby puts their feet on the ground and they realize, “I have to foster them.”

It’s a community effort because in the native tradition it would be that the aunties, uncles and parents in the community would start bringing things to the family home realizing that this child in our tribe is starting to come close to finding out who they are, so they would want to them.

They’d bring them a buffalo skull or hides, or feathers or whatever they needed for their ceremony would all be delivered before the time of this child’s age. People would ask for the of their village and families so that they were all there to receive the child at the end of the ceremony.

We need people today to realize that when they do a workshop and such transformational information is ed into them while their household is still in the technological age wanting them to ‘get with the program’ and go over here, or do this over there, that they’ve just had our re-awakening into seeing that as being just one perspective of the world.

Q: It’s very important to have the changes reinforced by your surround. That pull of the home environment or your peer group are so strong! Especially having the and cooperation of the parents is so important.

I wonder if there is preparation time for the parents also so that they’ll know how to be a better for their kids, or maybe there are times when they can

go through it near the same time or before their kids?

SM: Within the community people know that there are ‘pledges’. They pledged to be a sponsor in a vision quest, and in our mentoring program we insist that no child comes without a sponsor. It would be their mother or father ultimately and if not that, it would be their stepmother or their stepfather.

It’s gender separated so usually the girls would be with their mother and the boys would be with their father. And the father would come with their boys during a weekend retreat were they would learn what it means to become a man and how the fathers learned what that was.

We bring them through each step from the outside world as it is today back to the sacred fire of, “You were born with a purpose; you weren’t just an empty being trying to find and fill in the blanks. It was already given to you. Your child is asking to go out and discover this.“

The bravery to face ourselves starts very young and by the time the boys are out on their solo and they come back to the village there are tears among the fathers’ and grandfathers’ and uncles’ eyes because they needed that for themselves and it wasn’t there for them.

I’ve always seen the transformation in their parents’ so strongly because they realize what they’ve lost. It just brings me to tears every time and I’m so touched by the simplest act of a child. We put a child out in the wilderness right where there are deer, rattlesnakes, cougars, coyotes - it’s all out there!

They know they’re going to go through the night and they have instructions, they know what to do, and we know where they are. We have the men go out and double-check from a distance that they are OK in the night but yet when they come back in they can stand up proud. We’re not just leaving them because they’re children, yet even if they’re scared and may come in and cry, parents still give their children respect for courage.

Q: Yes!

SW: That’s what we all need at a very early age. Achievement - yes, good grades, soccer games, winning teams, yes - but this challenge of courage and bravery - that’s how a young brave was made in the old days.

Q: Sometimes I feel like the gangs that are cropping up around the country are trying to self -organize according to these old traditions. They’re trying to initiate themselves into being warriors and into being a man and gaining respect in their Clan and it just got removed from the real source. It got removed from nature and the elements and the spirit that invigorates it on a balanced, harmonious path that’s giving back to life and giving back to the community.

I wonder if there’s something in nature, because it seems like nature is so alive and intelligent and that it would also be a for them while they’re out on the hill in their vision quest?

SW: That is the key point of their pre-training, is that everything is alive. Everything is streaming information and life all the time, especially the trees. We take them and put them near a tree as their big brother or their big sister, depending upon the tree.

We teach them that this tree is your friend, you can talk to this tree. It gives you oxygen, it gives you shade, this tree gives you warmth. Then we teach them that about Mother Earth. She’s a nest, she’s like a quilt and wraps you up. When you’re scared you can get down on the ground and talk to her.

We tell them, “Don’t be afraid when the coyote comes by, be glad when he comes by to bark at you, he’s an old man; be with him. That’s a great thing!”

Oh, and when the owl comes by, that’s the eagle of the night! Don’t be startled by it when he ‘hoots’ at you, because he’s asking, “Who are you? Come on let me help you to know that you are a wise one and have a purpose here.”

If a rattlesnake comes, he’s not there to bite you. He’s so scared that he has no hands and no feet. Be very still and he may move right by you. He’s all about transmuting the outer world that’s kind of scary into something that’s very beautiful as a medicine that’s inside of you.

And he’s saying, “I’m diligent, I work very hard, and I’m not here to bite you or to tickle you, I’m here to tell you that you need to be patient, you need to be still and pay attention and look to see if my bird friends are there to bring you messages. Look out there and see if the clouds are coming because they are your grey guardians.

“You can drink of these clouds, you can eat of the air.” We teach them tools that are totally about the ‘schoolroom of what’s right in front of them’ they have never yet addressed.

Q: That is really beautiful and I’m so glad that’s part of the pre-training. Just that would transform everything that we’re doing right now towards sustainability.

SW: Exactly.

Q: I’m interested in what you were talking about where you do the awakenings for the earth and the homes and buildings where people live. This is different than re-organizing the space for energy to flow like in Feng Shui; you’re talking about literally awakening the structure?

SW: Yes, the structure, because any house or building is made out of things that are natural. Just think of them being reorganized. We think of them as being killed but it’s not true. Even cement is alive.

The thing that we tend to do is that we make up an urban myth and we imagine that the earth that’s now cemented over has no life. On one level it can’t grow a tree, but on the freeway I see a bushes growing up through the cracks so I know that it’s alive. What everything wants in life is to know that it’s important.

To awaken a piece of land - sometimes the land is asleep and sometimes the land has been misused, like over-poisoned on a farm. A lot of farms have been broken up into community subdivisions, orchards have been taken down and the tree roots have been plowed and moved aside but there’s still the knowledge that it was an orchard.

Let’s say you moved into a house, or you start an office, what I’d do is I go in and ask permission of the ancestral spirits of the land that the facility that

building, the home, can be an extension of their root of knowledge of mother earth and can be held there as a temple or a home, for the people who live or work there to be able to wake up in an alive environment.

By having insulatory factors from building skyscrapers, we’re not touching the earth in some ways yet all we have to do is to wake up the energies and address the rocks, address the petroleum products, the rebar, all the things that make up a house or a building, saying, “We know you too have been transformed from your original patterns just as we find ourselves changing from our original, complex composite.”

“We are alive and we address and call forth your aliveness now to awaken and to hold this family, or this company or this service-oriented group of people who want to give life, to breathe in that life and give back knowing that we know you are alive.”

Q: Another key is just to have the understanding about that circle of life, of respect, and that circle of acknowledgment is really important for all living things. Expanding our own awareness of what is alive, what ‘aliveness’ is, and how to have relationship with it is also key.

SM: A lot of people love their home and bail out where their working. Something is missing. You’d mentioned something about the earth’s alignment and function and how that is so important if we really look at the utilization of those energies towards a positive outcome.

In the native tradition of course, most of the dwellings are round so there’s a sense of keeping the hoop together, of keeping the sacred circle. When we go into these buildings we bring the sacred instruments, the drum, the pipe, the medicines and shells to smudge, purify and awaken the space with sage, cedar,

and sweetgrass.

We talk to each spirit as if it were a wisdom keeper that we are in reverence to, and we ask them in combination with our help and our participation to bring the space alive. Native people do that by keeping a fire in their home, and they keep everything localized by feeding the fire, feeding the truth, feeding grandpa, feeding grandmother, honoring the roundness and the inclusiveness, the wholeness.

The survival and sustainability come from knowing that in our good-hearted intention we are giving back; we are not takers. It’s important to note that when I see loggers - when I see trees coming down I have to note, “May that be a blessing for someone, may that keep someone warm.”

People tend to get negative about it, but that’s the blessing or the purse that the tree gives. We want to honor all those things whether it’s a nail, a board, a small piece of tile, everything is important, and that’s what we’re missing. If we want our world to be back to a natural way then we have to honor every single thing that we have.

Whether it be a bowl that was formed out of a rock or a piece of a branch, everything is important as our relationship, as our community. People didn’t accumulate then like they do today. We’ve forgotten the purpose of each thing or the value of it so when we get tired of it we throw it away or give it to someone else.

In the natural way, everything is blessed. We don’t need 12 dishes, we only need one nice container for food. We have the ability to have over-abundance, and yet we also have the bankruptcy of the soul’s purpose.

To honor outwardly, we must also give the respect inwardly. We’re takers rather than givers. So I really condone and teach the gratitude of a thing; to honor a thing because they’re all alive.

Q: I seeing these images of crystallized water created by this Japanese researcher named Dr. Masaru Emoto experimenting with the patterns of water’s response to various types of music, thoughts or words. The water crystals were transformed by the words, “Thank you,” by the word “love”, and by beautiful folk music, so it sounds like part of what transforms life is being in proper relationship with it, in gratitude, in appreciation, in caring and in taking care with it.

I wonder if you would talk about ways for Nature to best receive reciprocity, that form of giving back - it seems like acknowledging its life and being grateful already changes the relationship, but weren’t there stories of indigenous people leaving something there at the site where they picked something, leaving something exactly there?

SM: I usually carry tobacco with me and to indigenous people tobacco has a great value. In the Western or European world it’s more of a need or an addiction. To Native people it’s a blessing and we all believe in the value of the tobacco that first spoke to the people.

It spoke to us and said, “I will help you see a visible sign of your blessing and your prayer.”

So what I did there was in looking at the largest of the plants that were there, I spoke to the tobacco - the largest, tallest one there - the grandmother plant, and

said, “I see your beauty and I recognize your value and I want to ask you if it’s alright to harvest a few of your plants for the times that I want to clear my space for a ceremony, and I won’t take all of them.”

I give my gift and then I wait for the whisper that it’s okay. I know the difference of the storm of ‘no, no, no,‘ the wind coming up with things knocking around, or a ‘yes’ . No matter what the answer is, I recognize and I honor it.

If I see a rose hips plant here, a flowering plant in full bloom and I want to ask her for her strength to heal my body and the body of others in the winter. She’s like the pregnant rose, and we ask her for strength for the winter to heal my body and others’ bodies with this vitality that she carries inside of her, this vibrancy.

I offer the gift and the gratitude that she is a part of my world, and that I know that her beauty sustains me in the spring and the summer, and that her smell envelops me in love and puts me in an environment of happiness and joy. She offers the possibility of her womb to me in a way, from these beautiful rose hips to the furthering of my vitality so that I keep that health and happiness through the winter.

So I give her a gift - many times I leave little presents behind;, little bundles of cedar or a sprig of sweet grass. There are places where I go regularly, where I know there’s a big field of the things that I need; such as willow for a Medicine, a smoking mixture that I use with the red willow, and for the sweat lodges.

We need to have the hemlock or the cedar for our ceremonies. We go talk to the old grandfathers and the grandmothers, “Here I am again grandfather; I’m coming again with great respect. Please receive my gift. Here’s my gratitude for the energetic charge that you gave me to keep me alive.”

Native people see with a different kind of eye and with a different kind of ear. We don’t just look and say,” This is the one I want.”

We look to see who’s facing us, who is waving at us. Who wants to go? Then we give gifts to them. And we harvest every part of them, for ceremony, for gratitude, and for purification. We address the nature of something, and we look for their Elders, for their wisdom keepers, their old ones.

A lot of times will go to a special place like that and will do a ceremony, and we’ll leave many presents behind. We’ll leave food behind, we leave water behind, we do many things to thank the earth for water. We’ll do songs of gratitude saying thank you for being so close to us even if it’s miles away.

“Thank you for the water that you do bring to the surface for us, thank you for the sacred water for our purification ceremonies for our babies first water, for the water that will wash the young ones when they come down off the mountain, for the bride and groom when they take their vows and make their commitment, thank you for the water we use as medicine for the Elders.”

So we do verbal prayer and we leave many presents: like pieces of cloth, songs, and gifts of nature like fruit, deer meat, and corn, and we make a beautiful altar there. We say thank you and we walk away.

These are the ways in which we live from our hearts with gratitude. We’re saying to all of those plants whether it’s a tree, a bush, or an animal spirit that the earth has all of their footprints - their signatures touching the earth. So even though they may have just left their body, their signature is still there, the communication to all the relations is still there. That’s something that we forget

as humans.

We move from one place to another, but we still leave our signature behind. Our friends us. We are not forgotten and the things we did there are not forgotten. Our origins are places that we should return to at least a few times in our lives to give thanks for the ages that we’ve gone through. It isn’t something that people even know about. That’s what a pilgrimage is about returning to a sacred site.

I’d take people back to their vision quest site and say let’s pray here, let’s give thanks to the space that held you. Let’s talk to the trees and the rocks, let’s send a voice out to the birds so that everything here knows that you’ve returned.

Q: Could you expand a little more on the significance of making pilgrimages?

SM: Going to sacred sites, being called to someplace, or being called by someone’s invite can also be a pilgrimage if you were born there as it’s a way of returning to one’s origins. The elders say it’s important to regain our ancestral link, our roots, even if it’s someplace you feel akin to or that you’ve had a relationship with because it’s the place you were born.

They say it’s always good to return to see the content, to see the environment. Earlier we were talking about awakening the earth and the honoring, the showing of respect for a location. Going back to Chico where I was born - even though I don’t hang out there and I have to take a detour to get there - what I have found is that to do that every so often I go into an inexpressible place of great tears.

I think it levels us out of the place of what we’ve become, who people think we are, and it gives me a reverence to what was before me. So the tears come as a sense of gratitude and also as a sense of loss - a loss of connection. When we moved from the mainland to the island of Hawaii, I lost all the connections to my cousins, my grandparents, to the earth there and the larger family.

There was a reason for that I’m sure, but when you go back to re-link, you sort of mourn when you see all the second and third cousins in your family who don’t know you because we left and I have no memory of living there.

Q: You mentioned something earlier about footprints that are left with information and impressions in them and it made me feel that in your land of origin there are all these impressions of those you’re related to that actually fill out if not flush in those impressions that are in you, but can also be catalyzed or awakened and pull things together on a level of significance that wouldn’t necessarily happen if you didn’t return.

SW: Right, I think they are waiting there for us. When you return to the land of your origin, it’s as if you’ve had emails for all those years that are now incoming and you’re receiving and ing all that’s your birthright.

I got this gist of what it is to be born to a family, to a certain land, and to feel the pull of it when I touched the ground there. To pull it up into myself, to bloom into my tree of life and say, “I’m paying attention; I’m totally in the respect of the timing of being here now. I’m present, I’m listening, I’m ready to receive.”

I was called back a few other times by friends a little north of there and when I’d tell my mother I was there she’d say, “Oh we used to go up there when you were younger. We used to go to Feather River and swim when you guys were like

twinkles in our eyes.”

So really accumulating our roots after we’ve been cut off or even when culture does that to get us away from what we’ve become. I just decided that I needed to connect to my roots and it’s important that we all understand who we are and that we’re connected to a larger community of family, culture, city, state and world.

Q: It really does feel like there are these little tendrils that are emanating from us and when you reconnect into the community that recognizes you and the land that recognizes you and knows you deeply, that there is a connect that happens like in the movie “Avatar” where these tendrils and all these spaces get activated and parts of you get filled out so you can see how much more there is in your walk on this earth.

SM: I think that’s a good analogy for this. I went home for an event, but the unfoldment of that was very much like that in Avatar of going before the tree. Hearing the ancestral connection was very visceral, so unexpected. I’ve also arrived in states and in other countries where I’ve never been before and I feel home.

Q: Familiar.

SM: Oh my gosh yes, and knowing exactly how to get somewhere, or how to find someone; knowing I’m going to meet this person that’s famous who’s going to become my friend. We go places because we need to and there’s a reason. One of the reasons that we need to reconnect is that we recharge like computers or cell phones when we go back into our original energy.

Q: Nice!

SM: We need to regain our roots even if we’ve been in rebellion, even if we’ve been adopted out, there’s something in us that wants to recalibrate or renew and be fed. We say that it’s very important to do that, and in the same sense there are sights that we may not realize are important to us.

An invitation may come to go to a place you’ve never been before and when you get there you find out that you had ancestors who ed through there. I can segue into altars with this because when I bring my altar I bring me, my ancestors, and all that I am.

I am the altar, I am the medicine, I carry the total sum of my ancestry, my experience of life, my history, the hopes of my family to take the lead that I see past the lead of where they were able to go.

So when they drop their bodies it’s time for the next generation to take over, or whoever decides to do that or whoever was given the blessing to go next. Sometimes we’re charged with it, but usually we’re carrying on with our lives. I’m not doing something because my grandmother told me I have to do it. The sum total of it is inside of me so it’s not always something that’s so visual.

And then there’s ‘the altar’ where each item has been accumulated through blessings and the ceremonies I’ve participated in, and I have a huge altar at home, and I have a smaller altar I travel with. When you travel a lot you have to be succinct. For me the altar is where you go to focus, like a church or a cathedral where you go to worship.

There’s a whole different reverence. In a way your persona changes because you’re entering into a place that’s not the outside world. It’s an expansion of the unseen world, and for me personally, it’s my connection to the Great Mystery in a physical way of speaking about it.

When I teach people to work with altars, it’s like having a computer and it’s like a little postage stamp that fits in your pocket or it’s a very elaborate buffalo robe, buffalo skull, eagle feathers, a teepee full of things you come in to. It’s what those things mean to another person as the keyboard to turn on to get the information out that you’re sending, and the information incoming that you receive as a hollow bone that allows things to come through us.

Q: A ‘hollow bone’ - I like that!

SM: For myself, when I speak about the altars I’d like to be able to set a space where I’m sitting in some portion of me that they can’t see. It’s before them and it’s my space, and in my space I become a conduit so when someone asks me something or when I share something I’m also listening to Spirit that can add and enhance what I’m saying or may stop me and say, “I want you to go over here now and tell them something about this now.”

I’m giving permission to the guardians of the four directions to be present with me in this process. I’m not alone; I’m a finger to a greater body.

Q: That’s what the altar is, kind of like the telephone that you pick up…

SM: And it’s also a space…

Q: ….a space that gets created or amplified and enhanced…

SM: Fate is still having some say. An altar is a space that has been charged over many years with objects from grandparents, objects from other medicine people who have ed on, or giftings that denote that you’ve earned the right to these things. It can also be that I use this object for a certain thing and I’m giving it to you because I see in you something (that resonates). They all have a piece of a story.

It’s the branches to the tree that’s outside and above what you can see of me that’s translated into the symbols that speak to the people who are sitting around me at the time. They learn without having any teaching about it, that this is a holy place. When you open up an altar, it pours out, it showers out and when you enter into it we’re all going to get wet with the medicine.

It’s denoted by its boundary of a rug, or a buffalo robe, a prayer tie or a circle of stones, but this is an expression of that person. So to say I’m bringing my altar is me, to say I’m bringing ‘the’ altar is this bigger thing outside of me, and when I say I’m bringing my medicine, then it’s a combination of all of that to doctor and heal the people who are present.

There’s a whole teaching of altar, and I like to think about altar as honoring. I’m honoring what I am and visually bringing into manifestation the antiquities of my lineage, and not just mine but all cultural people who have a station. This is a tradition, this is a way, these all mean something to us and bringing it forward without spending the time to explain about each object, yet each object bestows its blessing on the people.

Q: It’s so valuable to have someone in the community or in the larger community who fulfills this role. I feel like it’s so incredible that in some of the indigenous communities there is someone who fulfills the role of the person who has the bridge to the unseen, into the mysteries who also is available to mentor, and to initiate through various ceremonies and to create this incredible communion within these transitions in life.

It reminds me of a friend who was Taino and had someone close to him die and he said, “I’m going to sing him home.”

Another friend who was Lakota was carrying around some of the ashes of his mother in a pouch tied around his waist, saying, “I’m going to pray for her.”

I wonder if there is something in the Choctaw or Cherokee tradition if there are ceremonies at the ing over.

SM: The way that it came to me was in being a sort of first responder in my doctor or nurse sort-of-way, being at fatal car accidents and having my own near-death experiences in being pronounced dead a few times in my life.

Q: Really?

SM: Yes, I was drowned when I was 15 yrs. old, and I was in a coma and pronounced dead after being thrown from a horse. I had my personal experience of being out of the body and seeing what we are when we leave.

Q: Do you feel this is a type of initiation though because I’ve heard this from so many shaman?

SM: Yeah, and I’ve had many. When the first ones came I was an evangelist about it, I was going around saying, “You have no idea - you don’t have to be afraid of death!”

I was like a chatterbox, like a parrot! Anybody who would listen I would tell because it’s the most amazing experience. Also, my grandfather called me after my third bout of 9 day comas within a year-and-a-half and he rarely called but this time he was the first person to call when I was actually conscious - like he knew - and said, “Are you ready to do it the easy way?”

Q: (Laughter) Oh my God!

SM: Yes! And I said, “If there’s an easy way sign me up because these ways are rough!”

It was rough for everybody around me. I was ed a bundle called the over bundle and I istered with that right many over ceremonies. In our tradition the bundle for some of us is very personal because it’s imbued with us. To say it represents our spirit is OK but as long as I’m alive the spirit is in me - but I have placed some of my spirit and some of my DNA in this bundle.

When a child is born the umbilical cord is the first bundle and through the ages of our lifetime that bundle is added to and becomes more of our life-holder. If someone doesn’t have one at the time of their deaths, we take some of their hair from them which was the old tradition. The family then stays at home in

mourning - caring for the bundle - we call it.

They abstain from gaiety, from going to parties or big events like weddings where there was a celebration. They really focused and stayed at home to care for the bundle which is to feed the bundle and pray with it morning and night for the 13 moons.

Then at the end of that period of time there’s a purification ceremony for that family, their home, their life, and their body. In today’s world we can do sweat lodges for a cleansing of them if they’re not capable - for example with an elderly woman who’s caring for her husband and is not going to be able to do some of the required things.

But it’s a time of letting go of the bundle. It’s helping the deceased in this physical form to cross over into the spirit world and there are to be no remnants of the mourning left behind. The way that’s done is by sitting with the bundle and telling stories of gratitude, and walking down memory lane.

It’s walking down memory lane and entering snapshots, feeding the bundle, and the watering of it, the smudging of it as if the person was still there but crossing over into the star nation. It’s the assisting through singing songs and having the tobacco with them or smoking the chanupa and these kinds of things.

So the person is dedicating their life for a little over a year saying that, “You matter to me, and I will commit to this ‘sending you back’, very much like the traditions in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Some traditions are just to lay the body to rest and some, like in the Balinese culture, the body is burned after having its time of resting.

After the cremation there’s the bones and how to be with the bones, then there’s another ceremony. In many cultures there’s a very personal way and in Western culture we put some preservatives into you, we put you inside of a coffin, we encase you in cement or we put you in the ground. So there’s insulation, insulation, insulation because we’re afraid of death and we’re afraid of decay. We have a phobia about it.

Q: Yes, but bones are very natural - right? They’re biological, biodegradable…

SM: Biodegradable, yes, but it’s the way people feel about their fear of not knowing. For instance, in the times of the black plague in Europe they burned the bodies because they feared if they even touched the bodies they’d be contaminated. Or like leprosy, where people were afraid that by not having the science that those handling the bodies were getting sick and dying.

I think we still have some of that, but in the sense that the shell being the altar, and the medicine, which is the soul that is inside, we need to have some way of recognizing and singing them over, in praying them over and laughing and crying them over to the other side.

It’s as if it were a birth, but we don’t get to participate on that side. Like when someone leaves and goes to another country, we mourn that they’re not just down the street or an hour away. Death is final, seemingly, and yet the spirit knows how to be around for a period of time until it knows that there is another environment to go to, another existence to be a part of. It’s a continuum, it’s not an ending, but the consciousness of that is not ed always in the system of the societal ways today.

In a way we’ve been domesticated out of our knowing and our brilliance and an attempt in our society to be proper and orderly and rule-oriented so that there is some way to handle all of these things. From the baby in conception to the ing of an elder or loved one, we have ceremonies that denote this as also a rite of age and not one of, “Well they’re gone now!”

I know a lot of people who never agreed to that ceremony until they were startled by a loved one who ed them, who reassured them so they knew it was really them then seeing, “Wow, there’s really something after death!”

For me, when I died and left my body there was a ‘whoosh’, then I felt air and I didn’t feel hot or cold, and although I don’t think I had a body yet I had eyes. I was high above the trees and it felt like I had arms or some kind of form and there was this empathy for what was happening on the ground for the people involved in the story.

I could see, I could hear, and I could know some things but some things were not in my knowing.

My aunt said to me that there was a time that people feared that someone was not really dead so they started putting a mirror under their noses to make sure that they weren’t breathing anymore.

I told her that my husband thought I was dead many times because I’d stopped breathing. We were an hour horseback ride away and there was this going into survival mode and people doing what’s within their ability outside of shock when someone in front of you stops breathing.

Q: Sure!

SM: In sharing with a lot of people you hear stories about scratches on the inside of the wooden coffin where they were buried because they’d stopped breathing and then died of suffocation from being in the ground. At that time, especially in Europe where a lot of these stories come from, they didn’t understand about near-death experiences unless someone was initiated into the ability to know.

It was taboo to even talk about it. People who were wise in the natural laws did understand and were called to see if death had really arrived. There were laws about leaving people in state to determine whether they really are dead and there were ways of keeping the body from decomposing in different climates. There were rituals created out of fear in a way to determine if the person was really dead.

Q: When you get embalmed and they take your organs out, if you weren’t dead before…

SM: Yeah, you’re dead! So understanding what that really is about, is that there can be vital signs that are not noticeable by breath, and that there are rituals that can assist people in their crossing over time. I found myself reassuring people left behind that this is not an ending, but like being at the birth of a baby in reverse.

The angels, in the Christian sense of calming people, their loved ones are in the hands of something that is very comforting and benevolent is not a lie at all. They literally become a light body themselves and are lifted up in their own means to many who are in that state - in another kind of existence from whence we came.

Understanding that and grasping that in many ways has been my method of assisting people for many years - in how to go, how to cross. I’ve gone into many hospitals, many hospice situations privileged to be with many families at those critical times. Many times I’ve felt them leave or drift away after the family has a conversation with the one who’s ing, even if they have morphine because I know that their soul understands.

It’s a settling of their family when the loved one stops breathing or the doctor comes in and says they’re gone, but the family witnesses them still moving as they take their first ‘hawk’ as we say - their first flight. Sometimes they’ll even open their eyes or a word or two will come out in the last moment before they close their eyes again.

Q: Okay, I didn’t realize that.

SM: The body goes through the unwinding of the tension that we hold in our bodies. When the family sees that they learn something they wouldn’t have gained through any book reading or on television. That gives them an initiation, a rite of age that they didn’t think they signed up for.

Q: There’s so much more preparation in our culture for birth than there is for death which is just as powerful. I can imagine how ive preparation would be for everyone who’s left here as well as facilitating the person who could be letting go more easily with that extra information, that understanding, knowledge, and .

There would be this whole process that the family could use to carry them for the several months leading up to the age, and then to experience the beauty of

ending it with a celebration of the memories of all they’ve shared before letting them go, along with a ritual for the letting go of the form itself.

SM: Yes, we have a burning of this bundle - that braid, the hair, different things - and sometimes the family will say, “Do I have to?”

And I’ll say, “You don’t have to, but what does it serve you, and how would it be in service to them?”

They just don’t want to let them go yet, so I’ll say, “Okay, you’ll know when that moment comes.”

They’ll say, “I don’t know if there ever will be.”

I’ll tell them, “There will be a moment when you’re able.”

It’s being reassuring, because for a woman who’s pregnant it’s creating the nest. The environment in her belly starts to bulge and she knows when she sits down and is holding this huge bulge on her legs and they’re going to sleep, she realizes, “There’s a container here.”

Death is a non-container - it’s an open door instead of the enclosure. The fruit is the baby, but the sending of the pollen is the sending the soul home. It effects the whole family because it doesn’t create anything except the experience that there was an essence and now that’s finished. In some cultures they hire mourners to come in and cry to get people to cry.

Q: Wow, I didn’t know that!

SM: Yes, it’s a very old tradition. They would mourn and they would cry, and they would wail just to break open the sense of grief because sometimes the family is so overwhelmed they’re numb and they can’t get into the movement of it. It helps the family along if they can cry.

It’s a way to honor the person. In the Irish tradition they have a wake. Everybody gets so totally drunk to the point that they do start crying, telling stories the whole time saying, “What are we going to do without so-and-so? He’s not going to be with us anymore. We’re gonna miss you, old boy!”

My mother was telling me about the wakes and how everyone would be so drunk no one could stand up anymore. In the case of their hangover the next day, they’re there in the physical pain, the emotional and soul pain of the loss. We have different ways and I don’t know if one is better than another, but there are different traditions of how it’s done.

I witnessed a funeral for a woman in Bali where they danced through the streets wrapped in a paper mache’ sarcophagus of an animal, which was probably whatever their family totem is. She was also with her best friend who died earlier and wanted to be cremated at the same time - a common woman being in a funeral along with a very elaborate ceremony.

Seeing that people do it in so many ways fascinated me since I was carrying the over bundle. I looked around for my peers, for the people who would do it with me and there was no one. I was realizing many times in my life that I come in this form to bring that teaching to people.

I found myself in the forerunner position as a Wisdom Keeper for a very long time. I mourned since I was very young being in states of great peace and prayer, asking the question, “Where are the elders? Will they be here when it’s my time for an initiation? Will there be someone to do the initiations that I do for the elders? Where are they? ”

I couldn’t find them. It was really fascinating how the manifesting of that prayer wound up in me traveling a lot to other cultures to have a translator express to me what was really going on there. Having a conversation about all these different ways of ing in a rite of age was very interesting. Then I looked in my own culture and realized how much had been killed off through disease, through incarceration and domesticating.

Q: Right!

SM: It turned people into Americans instead of into their ethnic origins. That’s when I became aware of the politics to homogenize people. Something deep inside growled and said, “Now you’re going to face the sadness and the loss, and what are you going to do about it?”

I realized that when the torch gets dropped and the ancients have stopped tending the fire either out of choice or because it was taken from them prematurely we’re raped of our heritage and the furtherance and we’re left in these stockades of life wondering, “Are we food, or do we have purpose?”

Then what happens is that we fall into the systematic question of, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” Or, “What’s expected of me when I grow up?”

In the way in which I move you are found or stumble upon where you’re going to go for your apprenticeship. In my case, there weren’t that many people. I was having this conversation last night about “Where do ‘twin-spirited’ people go for their initiations, which is what we would call - although not at all the right word in of the meaning of it - a ‘gay’ person?”

Q: I see. I never heard that term ‘twin-spirited’ before.

SM: They’re not even aware that their state of gender and feelings are about something totally unaccepted or known, because it’s all been killed off.

Q: It does seem like one of the characteristics of this technological, industrial revolution is a loss of so much of that connection in spirit that would have informed a way to move in these forms of progress to just enhance society rather than put it at this place of threat, and have people being attacked for these attractions that at a deeper level are being misinterpreted and misunderstood.

SM: Well, and they haven’t been initiated themselves to know why it is and that it’s okay to be what they are and that there’s a place for that and there’s a way that this was so important in the culture for this form of being to be present.

Q: It’s been present for millennia hasn’t it? Yet there’s always been this ‘wrongness’ attached to it.

SM: Wrongness or judgment or shaming or confusion or fear of ‘them’, so there’s a shunning that has gone on. The same is true for me - I can speak to this most clearly. I have parents who don’t even know who I am, and how do I come to be aware of this in myself? I’m looking and looking and looking for my own kind, sort of like an animal, not trying to mate, but trying to find comraderie.

The attempt that I find in today’s world, is that people have a fascination so they go towards it, but they can’t achieve it because it’s not for them to achieve the station - not everyone is going to be a shaman is my point.

Q: Sure!

SM: In the lineage of shamanism, there’s a place for participants and apprentices and devotees and for people who live the natural way. For me. I kept thinking the elders were going to come, so I kept sitting on the side of the road with all my knowingness thinking that someone would come along and say, “Okay, let’s go - school starts!”

I kept waiting for others of my own kind to show up and all I would get from other elders was, total recognition. I ended up being with elders more than with people of my own age, and it was right in front of me even though I continued to ask in my youth, “When does what I know come out?”

Even though we know these things very early on, there are stations for them.

Q: I love your knowledge and understanding about these ceremonies. It seems like it’s part of your medicine, your function. That rite of age that

happens at puberty seems like a very important one to set the direction for their whole life that’s true to their heart, true to their being, and true to what Spirit is inviting them to move as. Would you talk about the youth and that critical stage?

SM: Somewhere between the ages of 10 yrs. and 12 years-old a child comes in to themselves knowing their knowingness. It’s almost as if a part of them grows and sees and becomes alert in their body. It’s like saying, “I’m here, I have ideas, and I know some things.”

But they don’t have the where-with-all to know how they know that, so they’re just being effected by the environment. At that stage, it’s really good when all their relatives who are conscious to say, “It’s time.”

In this society we have a tendency to coddle and to inhibit growth - we call it protecting our children from violence or things that could hurt them. So what we do as parents is limit them. We don’t talk about these things openly, we don’t show our children things, we have ratings on movies, we in many ways retard them from what they’re very capable of looking at.

I’ve heard kids say things like, “My mother doesn’t know I know this, but…”, or in a conversation with my granddaughter when she’ll say, “Nana, what is it when you’ve been there but you’ve never been there. Or, you dream this dream and you’re doing the same thing now. What is that?”

You’ll say, “We call that deja vu,” and think to yourself, “Wow, I don’t ever your mom bringing this up.”

Q: Yes, responding to their natural curiosity is important.

SM: My grandchild gets to ask me anything she wants, which might be dangerous for the parents. If she can formulate the question, she’s ready for an answer. To not give them an answer, or some direction, or the to understand is a crime. In a way, that’s the yardstick of knowing that a child is ready for a rite of age.

So we train the child to be prepared for this unknown thing that comes about like for the day that they’ll go off to school for the first time and we prepare lunch for them, walk them to the bus stop, take them in the building - we prepare them. Nothing, even when you’re preparing for a rite of age, can tell you what the moments are going to be like. They must experience that on their own.

We do our best to prepare them that they are brilliant beings, they were souls before they became bodies, and that they each have a very important role to play on this earth and in their community, wherever that will be as they grow up, and that there seems to be some rules to follow, and there are some things to learn by observation. Parents will decide which ones they’ll allow their children to participate in.

Q: Of course.

SM: In our society, some people send their kids to private schools that are focalized like a Catholic or Mormon school, or they have a flavor like science-based or ecology-based. We even try to design the environment our children are raised in, but we don’t see to the soul.

The rite of age is to see to the soul, not to introduce religion, but for the child to recognize that they are a soul. The soul has a story that will unfold based upon the tree of life they were born to and what their commitments were. So explaining to a child that they got to see their mom and dad and choose them before they came in is part of the preparation.

We let them know that you will meet your Grandfather Sky and your Grandmother Earth who have always been here also - a different kind of family one who doesn’t come for Christmas. We introduce the child that they have the ability to be in connection with these spirits that are guardians in Nature and the four directions.

Also the wind, the water, and animals and that all of this is safe - not something to be afraid of. Respectful yes, but fear is there because you don’t know about something and think it could hurt you. When you educate that these things don’t hurt you, they can sing to you, the fear leaves.

Teaching the child what they need to know with their first-borns in Nature, the stones, plants, the animals, the birds, saying, “You’re one of them, and there’s your wild part. We want to wake up and preserve your wild part because it’s your survival mechanism.”

Q: Seeing Nature as friends, family and guardians would change things quite a bit! So there’s this type of introduction to the larger family in Nature, and then what is this ‘waking up the wild part that’s inside of them’?

SM: It’s the understanding to help them go deep inside, to learn how to be still and listen, even if that’s just for one minute, to ascertain what they hear or what they sense on their skin. Realizing that the wind will come to kiss

you. What will that feel like? And the understanding that the spirit of the wind is a being that will come to bestow a blessing on them if you don’t cower and become afraid.

Some winds are cold, some winds are warm; how to understand that you’re taking in life and being imbued with a blessing instead of being pummeled with rain or snow or hail or whatever the thing is, saying, “The sun is too hot!”

I try to help them understand the things in Nature that they’ve been insulated against may be the thing that will help them receive a teaching. Someone could scold them by saying, “You’re daydreaming again!”

And I’ll say, “No, another part of you is thinking and you’re watching the movie of the experience there so you don’t have to have it here.”

I teach them to listen to the sounds they hear and to scroll through all they’ve been taught in order to discern the difference between sounds. I teach them to inquire what it means to be hot, or to be cold, to be hungry, and to ask, “Who is hot? Who is cold?”

You get little tastes of the adult world challenges when you go through your rite of age so that when they come, they too are a spirit. It is life itself that comes. I teach them it’s the spirit of the sound, or the cold, or the harsh wind; I teach what they’re all trying to say. I give them a new dictionary of meanings.

Q: That’s important; a way to establish a line of communication.

SM: Then I tell them - I may have received an impression, maybe from the day they we’re born, during the naming ceremony, after they come off the hill, or whenever it comes - I will receive an impression from Spirit of what your life’s going to be like.

Q: Is this rite of age similar to a vision quest?

SM: It can be, but not necessarily. I do the same for adults when they say, “I don’t know my place.”

Then I say, “Well you’re going to go ask Spirit to tell you. In all your prayer ties you’re going to ask, ‘Please help me to know my place; what am I here to do? If I’m not doing it please guide me, point me in that direction.’”

Then when you come off the hill in whatever your experiences, and from whatever your alertness guided you to pay attention to, in this whole environment of beings that are not mom and dad or the city - the parameters that normally tell you who you are.

Q: So you’re saying that there are many types of sensations that will hit the senses in an experience that will each be brought to you for a reason whether it’s an element or an emotion, and to listen inside for its communication.

SM: Yes, they open someplace that blesses you and helps you to define more clearly the direction that you need or want or should, in the sense of destiny, go.

Q: That would be so much more fun for kids at school because they’re so overwhelmed with so many feelings, and they’re such little antennas being so open…

SM: Yes, and we try to put cream rinse on those little antennas to get them to lie down. We say, “Let’s put the funnel in and pour in just what we want you to know.”

So they’re trying to do it right, as we all are, and they’re trying to be courageous and learn what is put before them. But you and I know because we’ve questioned that throughout our lives, “Why did I learn that? Where do I apply this? How does effect my life? Why do I have to know that?”

The child is doing that much more than the adults think they’re doing it, even when they’re young. Even if it’s not the same formulation of questioning, it’s still there because their soul is guiding them. You give them the stick and basically the initiation sharpens the point a little bit better. Then as they start aiming their stick in the direction of their life path, it’s a little clearer.

When they come off the hill from the quiet, they sit and integrate before they go back to all the noises and conversations of all the people who are curious and wanting to know their journey.

I just tell them, “Wait 24 hours, because you have to cross the bridge back from the spirit world - from the natural world into a two-legged world. You are both a human being and a soul living inside of a temple, not just a sack of bones that’s your body and we need to have reverence for that.”

Sometimes we can’t talk right away about what’s happened and we need to just listen inside. You don’t have to tell for 24 hours. You’ll find that those who share the vision quest will gravitate toward each other because they’ve had a common experience.

Q: It does seem like a powerful message to take some time in solitude, even as a child, to start that message to slow down, tune in, be quiet, listen to nature, listen to Spirit, listen to your soul.

SM: And giving them the permission, the practice of it being able to say that it’s okay to listen, and there’s also the discernment of needs and wants and what would be right for the situation. Children want to and feel capable of doing lots of things. The only thing they can’t do is reach the pedals and the steering wheel at the same time, but they still feel pretty sure they can back the car up although they’ve not yet had any experience.

So we say, “You have to wait until you can touch the pedals, see out of the rear view mirror and see over the steering wheel,” and we put that into an age bracket when we can trust young people being in a car.

We can’t have them hurdling down the road at 70 miles an hour before they’ve had any experience. So it’s giving them permission in advance that we trust them, and that we trust them to the Creator that when we go get them they’re going to be there.

There are two ways to the bridge of this world and to the spirit world, and I feel that my role is to stand on the bridge. I’m going to be there with you in the Spirit world, but in the physical world I will come to you if you call me. If I get an

inkling in the middle of the night, I’ll go get them myself or I’ll send one of the men out to go get them, or at least go to check on them.

If they seem restless, or awake to stay near them or to approach them and say, “Has the spirit told you that your time is done? Do you wish to return to a twolegged world?”

They may say, “Well, I’m cold,” or “I heard something - don’t tell my parents.”

They’re so afraid of the shame of not succeeding, but really we all feel that even as adults. We hide those feelings of, “I didn’t do it right; I was scared. Maybe I shouldn’t be afraid - I’m an adult.”

I tell the children and the adults that they have permission to feel the full range of emotion. Sometimes they get mad at me! They get so pissed off that, “Why am I out here? Why did I listen to you?” These are normal feelings.

The process is for the young person to go into the vision quest, to come back and sit after those hours and to hear my translation of the visitors they had and the things they ascertained saying, “You might want to pay attention to this.”

Having the parents there to hear this and tell them that their child may need help in this direction, or that this is a good direction for them to explore right now, so find somebody who can help them explore this. In a lot of cases, I’ll also let them know that I’m here if they need help or when they come off the vision quest.

Q: That’s good to know.

SM: It isn’t over for a year afterwards because you have to see, “Can I walk on these new feet, on this new path that I’ve been given, or will I divert myself back to place where I don’t have to strive, to be out front, and I don’t have to achieve something that doesn’t seem ed in this world, as in my case?”

But you keep feeling drawn that way, even though it doesn’t make money in the world, it isn’t something that has a title you can put on a building, you don’t list it in the phone book as your shingle. I didn’t see in my parents’ world that it was something I got to be, so I felt confused and conflicted but Spirit keep pushing and pulling me by my internal desire so I wouldn’t feel satisfied until I went that way.

I teach how to taste the appetite of this thing and how not to feel distracted when it comes; how to hear your soul and say, “I hear you - we’ll get to that. I don’t know how or when, but I’ll get to that.”

Q: Are there other ceremonies we haven’t touched upon yet? Earlier you mentioned the wedding ceremony.

SM: When a young girl reaches puberty and gets her moon (begins menstruating) I ask, “Has there been a celebration for her to acknowledge the big change?” When a couple is getting married they stand together on a buffalo robe because Native people believe that they physically come from the stars, and the buffalo robe means it’s a high place above this earth.

They say that the Star Nation sent the bison down to be a great chief, so anytime we have a ceremony with the robe, whoever steps on it has to consciously leave the world where they once lived as a two-legged - this reality that we live down here - and go to a higher place of recognition.

When a bride and groom step onto that robe it’s acknowledged. They’re wrapped in a star blanket from the tribe that’s where the lone star came from - a pattern that’s been used for a very, very long time. It’s basically four directions with a male and a female point in each of the directions which represent feathers or beings.

When you’re on the robe you have a blanket that’s made by your family, prayers have gone into it, and there’s a way that we bind the couple with eagle feathers. There are sacred seeds that you eat when you’re coming into marriage, a pipe that you smoke, there’s water, then there’s an adoption into the family from both sides so they’re no longer separate.

After that, together they return to the two-legged world and have recognition from the community. There’s a lot that goes on in that ceremony that’s really beautiful.

The twin spirit is beyond being gay. It’s a spiritual priestess-hood where a person is an apprentice or getting ready to be in an apprenticeship, or it can also be somebody who is very aware and they do an adoption ceremony for their two halves to become whole.

It’s like a wedding where two families come together, and in twin spirits it’s acknowledging that there’s more inside of you. Usually it’s been noted by the community or family that this young person is in that space.

Q: So they’re getting adopted into each other’s family? Is that what you meant?

SM: I’m meaning that there are two souls in the same body.

Q: Oh!

SM: Twin spirited means that; it means a person may think that they’re gay, but they’re also a holy person on top of that. That’s what a twinspirited person is when they’re realized and complete. There’s a ceremony to acknowledge them just like in a Buddhist or Catholic tradition when someone goes off into priesthood or to be a nun.

There’s a ceremony like a marriage, but to God or to the Buddha. This is similar to that, but they’re coming into this alignment with their true higher self and of the two souls that they carry. There’s always a duality, and this is a duality at the highest level. This person is not gay in the sense that they are wounded in that dilemma, they are realized and realigned.

We could say for a man that would be the Father, the son and the Holy Spirit in that alignment, all totally realized. That’s a twin-spirited person at the highest level. Twin spirited people are medicine people, or they can be. Most of them, depending on what gender they are, are leaning towards their label but when they’re balanced they don’t have any qualms about being a female in one moment and a male the next second.

They don’t have any wound around it, but it takes a lot of training. You need to be discovered young to be trained.

Q: The maiden ceremony was another one. I wanted to include a synopsis in your words of each rite of ceremony.

SM: It’s for both boy to man, and girl to maiden from the ages of 10 to 13 depending on their maturity level. There’s a demarcation from being a baby and not an adult or teenager yet, but there’s a great accumulation of personal knowledge that they do know something and have more awareness than just doing what their parents tell them to do.

Q: Yes.

SM: I that stage in my life. I learned to ride a bike, began ice skating, started becoming creative in art, started having visions, and started healing. It’s a big time for people and we should acknowledge them then and not wait because if we don’t acknowledge them they’ll stop doing it. The ceremony itself is really about the family to say within the community that this young person is now stepping over into a new place and we have to do a cutting away.

They’re not a baby anymore so they have to start taking more responsibility for themselves - for what they say, how they act, and they have to start following more of the laws of nature. They know that their bodies are changing and it helps them develop more of a comfort level in what’s coming.

They’ll be feeling emotions, feeling the pull of the moon, the ocean and its tides,

knowing that this is natural, normal, it’s ed and you can talk about it. The ceremony is really beautiful, then they come back into the family and community having people say, “Well, here comes our sacred maiden now!” It’s a powerful thing for them. What’s amazing is that they start acting really different!

Q: I was wondering if it would have a smoothing impact on those teenage years when they become hormonal after having this kind of acknowledgment at puberty.

SM: Yes, because one of the things we share with them before the ceremony is what the elders would do. For the maidens, we put them in a structure while they’re bleeding and talk to them about meaning, about slowing down and limiting activities for a few days, we talk to them about herbs, and about being in rhythm.

We also speak about taking a nap, about dreaming and visions, being an oracle to stop close your eyes and be still for fifteen minutes. Nobody does that unless your parents put you in the back seat and tell you to be quiet! We show them that all of this is power and medicine that comes along with the woman’s cycle.

You get to have a ceremony during that time, and you get to dress differently, to think differently, and for the young girl, having her mother cater to her with candles, then eventually she starts doing a special ritual for herself. We give some things to the young girl so that they know when the ceremony is done and they look at these things in their room - like a piece of jewelry - it commemorates the specialness of the bleeding that’s coming or that has already started.

For women who talk about being stressed out, I ask if they’ve considered doing a practice of honoring their moon, even if it means going into work a couple of

hours late the morning. You have to stop; you have to show your higher self that you care about this, otherwise you will have a lot of stress to have to deal with.

You teach the young girls that there’s another way, and if the mothers and grandmothers, aunties, and sisters are doing it too, then it’s easier. We don’t have a culture that does that, so we have to create it.

Q: Is there a counterpart for the boys?

SM: Yes. It’s basically that they go out and do acts of courage. They do an overnight in the forest or desert by themselves. I choose a spot where coyotes or deer will go because they need to know that these are their brothers. We give them a teaching before they go out for a few days letting them know that the animals are born before we are. There are stones, then plants, trees and animals, and we’re born last; we’re the babies of the families.

They’re our guardians - they’re not there to hurt or harm us. They’re there to teach us something and we need to think hard on what animal that we need lessons from. I tell stories about Old Man Coyote, which is the Great Mystery in the form of an animal storyteller. He laughs, sings songs, and tells stories at night.

So I want them to hear coyotes and they do. As soon as a coyote smells a human scent around they become curious, check it out and let everyone know as they howl in the wind. The kids either stay awake or sleep very restlessly, and when they come back to their fathers, uncles, and grandfathers later in that day, along with their mothers and sisters, they’re acknowledged for having been on their warrior’s journey.

They are now coming back to the society of men and are taught to be gentle and kind in all things concerning the society of women. They’re taught to honor women, to honor themselves, and to take a vow to be a protector of life rather than a destroyer of life.

Q: Important. That’s very key!

SM: Both they and the young girls are taught to be careful with their words and not to use their tongue and a weapon to harm someone with their words. There are a lot of natural ethics we teach. They study with someone like me, and the men who help me have done it for a lot of years. They purify, they do quite a few things, and when they come down they get something we call ‘tying on of a feather’. They get a feather tied on which means they’ve done an act of courage.

These are the ceremonies that we’re missing and we need them in this culture. I have so much trouble talking the schools into letting us do them even at the Waldorf School. They’re very Christian-based and they’re afraid of ‘pagans’. They haven’t had it done but when they actually come to the ceremony, the fathers are crying, the mothers are crying. They get it. They realize in that moment how profound it is, that we need it in this culture and where do we fit it in.

Some fathers say we’ve introduced something that can’t be upheld in our culture, and I say, “In your family it can be upheld.”

You can bring your family to the ceremony and it will be upheld in a place where they can be with their own kind. Then we have a ‘kit fox’ society which are the

young boys, and we have a maiden society which are the young girls, and I put them to work.

Q: What kind of foxes did you say the boys were?

SM: Kit foxes are the ones with the long grey tails that are all over the place here. They’re scouts, they go and check things out and make sure there’s nothing around that’s not supposed to be here - they’re warriors. They’ll go around the camp, see where everyone’s tent is, make a map and come back and tell me where everybody’s living. They have a blast doing it and it makes them feel important. That’s what we need to do with our young people.

Q: Give them responsibility that’s connected to their community and to their family….

SM: Right, because otherwise the first big responsibility we give them is around sixteen or seventeen when they learn to drive a car and get their license. It should be way before then.

Q: That makes a lot of sense. Did you say you stay in touch with the boys after that ceremony?

SM: Oh yes. Some boys are in our community or are invited by the boys who are already a part of our community. Once I have the addresses I always invite all of those people to come and bring their families, and sometimes the boys and girls invite each other, invite their friends.

What I love about it is that I’ll come to an event and they’ll say, “Sweet Medicine, we know you! You helped us!”

Then their other classmates will know something special happened and it presents them with an opportunity to talk about it. I feel that what this does, like the grandmother ceremony that acknowledges everything you’ve done in your life in the prior three cycles that brings you on the steps of wisdom, is to walk around the sacred tree of life.

This is the complete revolution up to being an elder and moving back towards being a child and phasing out of the physical form and transcending. I think that what we need to know is that there is a continuum. The first thing that we need to do it to create a village, a stream that only families and communities can give to an individual - even someone unique like a twin-spirited person.

Talking about bleeding time could be awkward because no one talks about it. Some participants in my women’s group say that they’ve never talked about it or paid much attention to it, they just want it to go away.

I say, “This is something we need to heal! This isn’t something we just package and hide underneath the covers. It’s something we need to acknowledge and honor that means Life.” Yet it’s interpreted as very pagan thinking to celebrate blood, and redness, and juiciness and ripeness.

The conditioning is that, “No you can’t do that. You’ll get in trouble if you do that.”

Nature is a tree that blooms, it bears fruit, and it just gives and gives and gives. It’s just natural. The same is the whole cycle of growing into what we will become; it’s natural.

Q: What’s the next step in the grandmother’s ceremony after celebrating and looking over those first few cycles of life? What do you bless or acknowledge that is forthcoming? You’ve already set your course and direction in your life.

SM: What it involves is that you a retrospect of your life that involves all the phases like infancy, childhood, teenage years, college or not, marriage or not, children, being a grandma or not. You recognize that you’re at the stage of life requiring wisdom. Wisdom is air - spirit. So we acknowledge elders with feather, blankets, shawls, robes and things of the sky. Star things, planet things, the buffalo in the north, or the eagle, and then we bring them to the fire because the fire is wisdom.

Then we have them sit in council. To be a council member means you’re not just a community member anymore, you sit with the elders. You become someone who speaks up, who shares their ideas and their vote toward something that’s going to happen. In a lot of native traditions the elders are fed first at meals.

So you this new hip at 62 years old where people are going to watch you and see to your needs, but the whole idea is that people are going to start coming to you and ask you, “What do you know?”

There’s a whole ceremony where people are requesting for you to look deep into the stars and pull from that knowledge when people ask, “What has life taught you? What is your flavor on your path, where your feet have touched down? What are the lessons and how can you assist?”

You get to see that each thing you did led to making you whole and to be a holy person. By the time you get to have ‘snow on the mountain’ we call it - you’re a ‘white hair’, that wisdom comes with that. You’re above where you were; all the other cycles are below you - you’re snow on the mountain. There’s a beautiful ceremony to honor your beauty.

There’s a birthing part of that ceremony, there’s a maiden part of that ceremony if you’re a woman, there’s a ritualistic marriage into life - the sacred dream - and now here you are, you’re snow on the mountain. You’re valuable like a set of encyclopedias.

There’s a part of the ritual where you step through the hoop where you now come out on the other side where people will ask you what you know. You get to go teach. I grew up with the word ‘deacon’ as someone who is now wise and has studied the way of life and of spirit and can now help guide.

Q: When I first heard you speak it sounded like you learned so much from your grandmother.

SM: Grandmother and grandfather - they were teachers! I learned a lot from them that was invaluable. They were already snow on the mountain and just oozing with the richness just pouring out of them. Elders are incredible teachers to every age. There’s not an age they don’t teach at.

It’s giving them the permission to step up and start teaching. It’s interesting because a lot of the young people want to be the teachers, but if the young people teach, there’s no wisdom; it’s only acting out how to do something without any knowledge behind it. It’s the blind leading the blind in a lot of ways.

That’s what happens in our culture today when we put away our elders.

We stopped asking them because we think the information is archaic or outdated. We have a prophylactic in life like a fear of what might happen to you and nobody knows what that would be. What I say is that you get pollinated by all the knowledge and wisdom to become this incredible tree with ripe fruit.

The young ones, like little birds, want to come and eat it. So you find that you have a place and that’s why you the council of elders. Inside the teepee there’s a place to sit for you that’s closer to the fire, with a more comfortable seat - there are ways to show that honoring. You get to have the benefits of your family looking to you for guidance. We’ll all be going on that journey together.

Q: Wouldn’t it be amazing if when there was an issue in the family or in the community there was that group of elders - aunties, uncles, grandparents who would all be available at the same time to meet.

How much more wonderful that would be if it would extend to the whole neighborhood with several elders from different families to be available when young people had an issue to have that broader perspective with which to hold it, to look at it and to work with it? The idea could develop more and more by starting to embrace it in a small way.

SM: Yes. That’s where we’re going. As a whole culture we’re stepping over into the next phase which is really about stepping into wisdom, but starting as a child. It won’t be like we’re going to lose our minds and not know, but there will be new ‘rules’ if we want to call them that.

Natural systems are going to have to come out of survival, and I don’t mean to suggest any doomsday is coming, but we’re still going to have to look at how to be together and make community so that it dissolves the boundaries - the sexual and racial differences. Abolishing things that have been a hindrance and initiating furtherance.

Q: Nice!

SM: The wind just blows, snow will come, Spring will come after but we don’t know exactly when. We know the phases will come and we do the best that we can. Not everyone is going to be a leader, but we have to be an authentic leader unto ourselves. That power is generated when people are acknowledged and not just herded through the chute of life and sold off to the highest bidder.

My grandpa used to say that the technology that we have in a television or a computer or phone is child’s play. It’s fantasy play next to what we already have the possibility of doing. We’re just using a toy rather than using our own ability to do it, and I agree.

Q: Yes, a lot gets lost in the translation or a lot of the transmission gets lost in the technology.

Note: Sweet Medicine Nation currently travels offering ceremonies and talks about indigenous wisdom. To participate or offer , the Four Winds Foundation at www.fwfoundation.org.

“Four Winds Foundation (FWF) is dedicated to serving, living and teaching the natural way of the human being and the connection with the Earth, Spirit and our World family.”

Chapter 6

PETER WOLF - TRACKER / Wilderness Trainer

Peter Wolf is a Jewish American man in his late 50’s who has taught tracking, awareness/observation and wilderness skills for 30 years. He was drawn to train in indigenous skills when he met his first mentor at age 11 in 1968. In our interview, the subject spontaneously opened up about genocide, and how different people from cultures who’ve been subject to such treatment have been able to survive.

P: I’ve been talking to rabbis and other spiritual leader friends lately about what sustains people. When I look at African American folks and Native peoples have faced here, the wound is still fresh, as it was for my own people from WWII. In each, whether it’s the killing of culture, or of attitude, wellbeing, life style, or even one’s ability and sense of efficacy or whether it’s killing the whole person, it’s killing.

Coming from a tribal culture that is as much as to twice as old as our documented 3800 years, which has managed to keep continuity of cultural survival without a homeland, I do reflect on these things. The Tibetans are looking at this issue currently with their situation. So I’ve been looking at that lately in emphasizing the metaphoric in my survival courses more.

Q: That would be interesting. There certainly has been a large number of Jews in every spiritual group or community that I’ve ever visited.

P: I can’t speak for others. In the culture that I came from our survival has depended not just on what is in common to us as a cultural group but also from the strength of the individual. It just seems to me that in looking back over the eons we came from the wilderness with little else but the spiritual. I can feel that alive in how I look at things.

It’s a personal disposition to go deep, spirit, make a difference, to try to make the world a better place. But even so, at the end of this day today, whether in an interaction at the grocery store or halfway down my walk on a trail this afternoon, I need personally to take actions from this commitment in my heart. Spiritual groups and professions as well as educational circles tend to have a lot of people looking for the way to sink the roots.

My grandma, who lived through the Great Depression, used to say, “Get a profession, because what you have in here, nobody can take from you.”

Those words were about business because she was a business woman in her time before women could even vote. That was a negative way to phrase it, but what she always meant was to become able and strong inside, become effective, walk strongly and have good effect.

My people for generations have had things taken away. It’s something that enables understanding for what has happened with African American and Native peoples here. What My grandma taught me in the way she spoke didn’t come across as a negative; it was teaching from history. Among other things, I loved her for that.

Q: You said on the phone that you had a kind of perfect upbringing or background.

P: What I experienced as a pre-med wasn’t the traditional training, initiation or mentoring circumstance. It wasn’t a normal pre-med circumstance, it was a wash-out boot camp scenario. Very telling about the kind of paradigm it would install in mental software. So at that young age I lost my taste for it, but I never lost my taste for that which the healing truly represented at its essence.

When I was 11 years old I met my first mentor. We were standing out on a dock in a lake in the Malibu Mountains, Chumash country, and he began asking questions: “What do you see? What else? What else?” He kept asking the same question for what must have been 15 minutes. It turned the whole world on for me.

Just as I thought I was getting off the hook, he said, “What do you hear?”

And then he did the same scenario. This went on and on. I was a little kid, of course I obeyed; I just continued through the process, well past my attention. And then suddenly it exploded full blown in my brain how all things are connected.

He just looked around and said, “See? People rarely see what they look at or hear what they listen to.”

And he used to play tricks like that a lot. I love that man for what he did and still honor him today as my first mentor because he gave by example the ability to lead observe, be creative, listen, point the way, to influence.

He influenced me at a young age to think about qualities of reverence, and selfreliance, and he had this motto. He used to say, “Make the most and best of what you have, even if it isn’t very much.” I thought that was really trite, but as it turns out, that is the central core of what my training became as an adult.

Q: It sounds like he planted a lot of seeds. Was there any incident or person

later on in your life that shifted you into the wilderness perspective in your life? Was it a gradual unfolding?

P: I know you’re going to be speaking to Elders and other leaders, so you’re going to have a common perspective when I say to you that since we live in a society that really can do rituals, rites of age - often times a person still can be initiated. It can through mentorship and hard work, it come by accident; it be brought on by circumstance. There have been a few for me.

I have had teachers both in North and South America, but the central training, outside of ongoing long term personal disciplines that led me to work with people, spanned about twenty-five years.

Many years ago, having gotten college and graduate degrees, having gone back into the business world and been successful a process began where I felt as if I was dehydrating in the soul.

Back to the “perfect upbringing” scenario: You can do everything right and even receive external recognition for it. But if we do not have Vision and do not find and walk your path, what are you really doing here?

It’s not enough to be an ‘A’ student; it’s not enough to follow all the rules. It’s not enough to be good at what one does, it’s not even enough to be fed by what one does; the feeding has to go full circle – it has to help others, has to feed the world to be better. For me, the equation was not complete.

Q: Oh, you mean in of the ‘perfect picture’?

P: I don’t know what “perfect” is, but let’s say that I was fortunate to have a good family. I learned the rules and did everything right, and in my young world, learned how by the rules of my culture to “get an A”. The family was together, one sibling, parents even to this day are still together now in their mid 80’s. We weren’t spoiled but we had what we needed.

My parents had concern for good education, for community awareness and involvement, and living an ethical and good life, and naturally my life took to those patterns. And there was social conscience.

I as a kid when black folks started moving into our neighborhood. It was pretty white and the crazy business of “white flight” started; folks freaking out and moving away. My mom got a bunch of people together and started a “Human Relations Council” to try and get people to wake up, meet our neighbors and stop it.

She understood back then that community is community no matter what shape or color we are, and the only way for it to be real is for everyone to come in with a perspective, share and get along.

That’s an example of our family environment. From it I decided in high school that I wanted to be a physician. I talked with relatives who were in that kind of thing and realized I had to get on the stick so I took all the college prep courses. I got serious in high school and went hardcore in college prep, and then entered a university accelerated premedical program.

It was an unusual program in that 160 of us were to be pitted against each other in a four year university program simply time-condensed into 3, with an

additional concentration of extras to compete. In the end we found all but 18 would be washed out.

It had not exactly been presented that way, and I quickly learned that it was essentially designed to foster a vicious competition that was, let’s say, less than what I considered wholesome. The process began revealing me still then as a kid that I am really a cyclical, wholistic depth thinker, and not the extreme of “Type A” personality that would thrive in that environment.

It was a wake up to bring observation of environment into the intrapersonal realm, rather than just fit in. It started an introspection, a path that would become a life-long spiritual practice, a more suited training in Psychology and a new quest for working with others through relationship.

Whether by fate or accident in the transition, I heard the voice of a long lost friend on the radio. I called the station, spoke with him, and by a string of fortunate events was practically ushered into a career on the air in radio and public speaking in the Los Angeles area.

Q: Oh, wow!

P: Yeah! (Laughs) It was a big shift from something like what I had intended to be a healing profession at a young age to shift into public speaking and public events. But there’s a holographic aspect that you don’t get at the time about relating.

There’s an interesting thing that happens to your focus and how you address people with your attention when you realize that when you say something, any

part of 4 million people might be listening to you. It’s immediate, in the moment, no rehearsals, in the now as you are and it makes you want to be real; not just entertain, but to have an effect.

Q: What turned the tide again into getting interested in these things?

P: I found something absolutely fascinating that the aspect of communication - though it wouldn’t seem so - could bring real human perspectives into what is often garbage programming. It’s one thing to listen to yourself talk, quite literally really. As I spoke what was coming back into my headphones was a radio signal that came back in a very slight delay so I’d be in the present, hearing the immediate past as I spoke into the future.

This kind of makes you pay attention to quality. Talk about a meditation practice! It’s another thing to hold it as a way to reach to peoples’ hearts.

Q: That’s a nice thing to say! I feel like there are probably a lot of people in that situation in their lives and I wonder if it wouldn’t be helpful if you would describe how you knew; what is the thing that tells you?

P: That’s a good question and it ties us back to lessons from living closer to the earth. Listen inwardly for intuition, where the voice is soft and easy. Intuition is God’s voice, speaking through your body and every person hears, sees or feels it differently.

If you don’t pay attention, it will get louder. If you still don’t, the world you know that has worked so far will stop working. And if you still don’t, it can get

urgent, even ugly. I have experienced all of those.

Q: Because you were successful by all the outward signs?

P: By all the outward signs I was successful. But we’re in a modern culture that demands of people all the time that we be externally oriented; not to work from internal guidance. Internal guidance is a way of saying personal intuition. It comes to people in basic but individual ways.

For people who are religious or spiritual it may come as the voice of Spirit or of their God. In of emotion and psychology, in a situation like mine it could come as a loss of ease, a loss of “juice”, a loss of enthusiasm. Another way of looking at it in of patterns in the culture is that I was fortunate to hit a midlife crisis in my thirties. I’d been doing just fine, and then felt I could not live that way anymore.

There I was earlier in the business world, selling umpteen thousand dollar devices to people and companies. To my experience I was doing it easily, getting them financed in a myriad of ways, leaving folks with a product that was great for business, great for them, the environment, all with a nice commission.

Everything should have been wonderful. But there came a point where as I kept not listening to the voice suggesting change, the one that said, “What are you still doing here? What are you doing applying your intuition to making people buy things? Isn’t there something else for you to do, just a little wider? There’s something deeper to do with this.”

And the more I tried, the harder it got. Ultimately, I would sit in the middle of

the presentation, and my blood would start to boil. My thoughts of giving the presentation were interrupted with, “What am I really doing here?”

I would literally drop off the end of a sentence and I’d have to bring myself back. It was if an unseen hand was grabbing me to shake me. It was classic. If you look into fairy tales or myths of many peoples that when the subtle communication isn’t recognized and respected, then a less than subtle communication will come, and it will become more and more overt until it downright interrupts your world.

Q: Yes.

P: And if you won’t follow it overtly, you’ll get it covertly, but you will be given the communication. In other words, everything on the table will look just peachy, but under the table, but if you keep at being intuitively dense, your outward success, or your personal sense of well-being may erode. Unheeded, eventually, hell can break loose.

Q: Thank you for expressing it the way you have because it’s a kind of perfect expression of how those unseen things work their way into our predominantly outward society. Somehow that communicated itself to you in a way that you were able to hear and understand, and at some point were willing to follow.

P: The groundwork was laid early, but then in real depth, activated afterwards. See, I can be a hard-headed. We can see it with people who are seriously driven and want to see results, but who might sacrifice an internal life or relationship quality to get it.

At the same time, in of intuition, they may not notice their intuition whispering, or speaking, or even sometimes shouting. For some, if they don’t listen, they’ll ultimately take a hit. It will come through career, relationship, disease, or worse.

So they go far and they have a lot of juice, but they also take it hard, and they also get hit hard. This has been a lesson that I’ve had to learn my life because one of the processes in becoming initiated is learning to listen all the time. For me, the stakes with time went up. The lesson came hard.

There are times when being preoccupied, or “too busy” to follow intuition in the past has cost my health, my vision, nearly cost my life. Recovering those things makes them precious and makes it necessary to help others.

Q: I hear you!

P: In my classes, I often make sure to balance the fantastic by occasionally telling failure stories. Usually they are humorous, at least in retrospect… We need humor, and we need teachers to be real. I have seen too many teachers become mythical superheroes in their own minds.

A student wants information. But human psychological structure, from all the way back in infancy, can too easily create mimicking of a teacher or his ways. Teaching has two challenges. One is teaching, the other is how to empower a student to find his/her individual strengths and learn to maximize on and be comionate of their weaknesses too.

Q: It’s one of the really simple but important aspects of the cultures as they

were for thousands of years that we overlook in of what to of those ways to have here, is time; that productivity is not the only measurement of success or of who you are as a person. Time to just enjoy being here and enjoy being with one another.

P: Sounds of ‘pre-’ indigenous village life had significant laughter and talk and singing, as well as the sound of tools. These were the predominant sounds when time wasn’t just digital, when there was time to live.

Q: So much of what happens in the process of acknowledging or reclaiming a more natural or whole way of being, even if it comes from a more traditional culture, gets lobbed into this one New Age category by people who can’t really differentiate.

P: Differentiate between…?

Q: Between borrowing surface aspects from a tradition, and learning to acknowledge or preserve aspects of culture that are ancient, real and true. What is rediscovering meaning for oneself in a mainstream culture-less America, and what is let’s call ‘New Age’ a surface dabbling in aspects of different cultures, arts, and sciences that is disconnected from the true depth, significance and meaning of it?

I’ve in a way had to define it in order to ask the question, but I wanted to leave it open for you to define what you mean by that phrase.

P: Nail on the head there. It’s a big fascination, and a problem. Let’s get one

thing straight here – everyone has to start somewhere. You go to a big convention and see aisle after aisle of new growth, spiritual, healing, bodywork, health, yoga, and so many “disciplines” that look so cool at first and who wouldn’t want to try something out. So do it!

But when you are done shopping around trying out experiences to find out what really might challenge you as a person, choose a discipline and dive in. Immerse yourself and learn it to its depth and how it relates and connects to the greater world and other disciplines in the end.

But here’s the difference. The “new age” approach was originally from a wonderful place of curiosity, seeking a new paradigm with which to approach life. But as is habitual to both humans and animals, it became tentative, a sampler’s approach. No real commitment to discipline, practice, depth and the hardships that can be experienced along the way to work through to the real gain, finding it easier to seize onto meanings such that are just as “branding” and lacking in depth as what they avoid.

The point is not to become so intoxicated with only “positive” personal “growth experiences” or “breakthroughs” or whatever new term is being coined and marketed in the next series of workshops. It is to learn to live with ourselves, others and the greater spiritual picture of things with strength and comion in an interactive and integrative way.

Sometimes this means hitting and going through walls, discomfort, challenge, even hardship. That’s the trap, the very limit of new age thinking that it was originally trying to avoid. Again, something that we in modern culture have to think about, study about, and discuss, which is a more natural part of peoples who are a little closer to the earth.

Q: Right! That kind of brings us to the underlying foundation…

P: Many years ago, I participated in the “men’s movement”. It encouraged the killing off that part of myself known archetypal way as puer eternis, the “peter pan” innocent; naivete’. The job of elder guys is to hold a container within which or from which the younger ones can go face initiation, depth, threat, ‘trying’ and meaningful experience. Hopefully they do so in a way that they kill off naivete’ but in the process don’t get themselves – the whole guy – ‘killed’.

But as I described earlier, the guys easily identified with the archetypal “senex”, which looks at first like the crusty old man, a rough male parallel to the female crone. It was too easy for those “elder” guys to suddenly adopt a role and polarize in that direction, losing the very balance and flexibility between archetypes that ought to be.

It became more role acting than integrating. Oh, I got caught up in it too: I worked hard to “kill off” parts of myself, only later in life to learn that having the balls to retain playfulness as an adult, the ability to be flexible and adapt and work creatively as well as to be tough when needed meant balance and strength. You see, health means living at the center and drawing upon each archetypal energy as needed in a balanced way.

Q: So that would be an analogy of the new age being too over-emphasizing one aspect of their nature or other’s nature?

P: Pick a discipline that draws you, calls to your soul. It might be a real martial art, a spiritual practice of inquiry or meditation, or another discipline where a teacher can become a mentor. Stick with it for ten, twenty or more years. Hit the plateaus and walls inherent in any real practice,

which uncover your weaknesses and ego over-indulgences, work through them and find out what you are made of.

They will include spiritual awakening, but will also open you to opportunities for emotional work, dealing with ion, communication, aggression, ivity, comion and discernment. It will make you a stronger, deeper, better human being.

And from that place, whatever and whomever you touch will give you an opportunity to make the world just a little better, perhaps one little step closer to Creation. That’s a discipline. Commit to immersion, really surrender and work hard to embrace the discipline and become versed in it – until it becomes you.

To fail to do this, instead dabbling in (this) meditation workshop, (that) exciting emotional “breakthrough” conference, then bouncing into the next spiritual teacher’s “intensive”, but not making the true commitment to do real work and stay the course – is to be addicted to the honeymoon but not have the guts to commit to the marriage. That’s where the new age approach fails people. This includes romance about earth-based cultures.

In other words, you gotta have context. Not like this: People go through 10 to 15 years of meditation practice, and only then learn in retrospect that the object wasn’t to have become addicted to meditation’s calming powers, an escape from facing what needs to be faced sometimes.

Meditation’s job isn’t to kill the mind, but to awaken it integrated and effectively to dance with what comes our way and engage the world with strength. Folks in our get-rich-quick culture can mistake the stoner high of getting onto a spiritual path the same way that we can trip into a less than useful relationship on attraction alone instead of a meeting of souls who will grow and deepen over the

long haul.

Q: …And have it work in the context of challenges in daily life.

P: Now you’re onto it. That is where we exit new age and get into real life. Example: Many people who are my students are middle or upper managers in corporations, they’re teachers and psychologists, some of them are Special Forces or military officers at the commanding level, a lot of business people, surprisingly, engineers, and interestingly – also people from defense industries.

It might seem that from some of the most unlikely places, I see in my students a deep hunger to learn skills which at first seemed like “mastering a skill”, later morphed into “mastering themselves”, and later still became a quest to open the deeper heart of listening and discernment. It’s so fulfilling to see that, be a part of that.

I can tell you it pleases me how deeply, to lead someone through learning a skill as simple as, say, learning to make fire with a rock and a chunk of wood, or learning to find and purify water, in a landscape that may have seemed threatening.

In this time of instant “vision quests”, so many quickly ‘certified shaman’, cooked up here and in Latin countries in 10 days, we can see how our culture contains a need for real identity. I have met so many people who introduce themselves as shaman. “Hi, I’m _______, I’m a shaman”! Someone goes to a survival school, sits in as little as 20 or 30 hours of lecture in any number of schools around the country, perhaps gets to try a little bit of a skill once, and as an “expert”, then open up schools of their own.

I feel that we could witness the destruction of the gene pool of the old school in one generation just because it’s a non-regulated – but who could regulate a thing like this! I’ve seen people who will listen to a channeler or to some kind of medium and then go and have to spent two or three years of their life undoing the direction that they took because instead of having real vision, they were hallucinating or following someone’s “guidance” that wasn’t really for them.

Imagine an initiation where people can learn to slow down, access their intuition the whole way, learn their own form of meditation, their own style of insight. As far as I’m concerned anybody who’s a good teacher must facilitate somebody to find their own style.

Q: I wanted to tie in the ways of some of the traditional cultures and their ways of being leaders, and how being more whole and natural as a people and respecting, acknowledging, sensing, knowing their interrelatedness to all of life - how that effected their way of governing, of being together.

And how, as you say, in coming back in touch through some of the work that you’re doing in wilderness trainings and in simple ways of tapping into survival skills, what does that mean in of perception and relating to the environment?

P: First, what we call “survival skills” are not survival skills, they are simply the way that people who lived close to the earth lived. In our time, things seem to have to have elite names. We don’t just eat decently and become healthy, we have to go after “optimal nutrients”. We don’t even exercise; we “workout for peak performance”. Whole industries thrive on this craziness.

As a former ballet dancer I have a good understanding of sports medicine. I had several knee surgeries over the years which ended a career. Just as assuredly as the new orthopedic industry is based on getting injuries by going for that peak performance; why do we need to always have peak performance? Think about it.

This is a non-acceptance stance, to avoid the criminal state of (God help us) boredom, being in a naturally adapting state, being bored or normal. We and everything we have to have must be something elite and special. Reflect on this. Then look at the other side; stress and depression. Is it any accident that a huge percentage of our population is eating anti-depression medication? What would the demon “normal” look like?

Q: Relationship to all of life?

P: … relationship to all of life, and good leadership; all of these things are summed up in one word, belonging. The first thing someone ever sees when they me through the web or whatever is a question: “What would life be like if you felt like you truly belonged just about anywhere?”

Why not learn to walk just about anywhere on the planet and find a way to belong there physically, but also find a way to speak the language of the people, not just in their own tongue, but in the heart.

Why not develop an ability not just to communicate, but to commune?

Why not sur walking through the woods, or the desert, or a town; why not sur just doing that, and instead, blend in and feel the flow of the place and read the body language to the behavior and the overall feeling sense of the

people? That’s belonging!

Q: Would you differentiate for those who may have already studied behavior and body language as sales people or attorneys in order to influence in a certain way, and the way that you’re talking about communing, feeling and sensing?

P: The practice of sales, no matter how human-relational it sounds, is ‘closing the sale’. To that end, their modern interpretation of reading body language included behavior modification, influencing body language as well. Some of their ideas were, and still are - for example - the more you can get someone to nod ‘yes’ while you’re speaking to them, the more you’re giving them a mind set of ‘yes’.

Q: (Laughter)

P: There are areas of psychology where these practices are used to help folks cope, improve, grow. But sales people use them to get them to sign the order. Been there, thanks; I am interested in helping people to know themselves at depth and the world in a better and stronger way from their core.

The more you can observe a person’s interest by whether they sit forward in their chair, or whether they sit back or put their hand to their nose, their eye, their ear their chin their mouth; each one of those communicates a sense of how they’re thinking.

One is, “Huh, let’s have a look at that.” Another one is, “Huh, something’s fishy

here!” Another one is, “I’ll think about it.”

From that point you essentially do cross-desk brain surgery is the idea. Now these trainers don’t seem to believe this, but when you look at what they’re doing, they’re teaching people to observe, draw conclusions and target/manipulate the other person’s behavior. What I’m suggesting is, what if we can get beyond all that?

Psychology is limited. It tends to focus on the wounds and development based on the wounds or talents of the individual. It focuses from individual to individual in of psychology itself. That’s about where it is. Transpersonal Psychology is nice, but it’s still young. It’s easy to get stoned on it. Modern spirituality tends to focus at the end of the psychology part.

It’s important to use it to find oneself in the greater pattern; not lose one’s identity in it. The movement to “save the earth” is a great idea; we just have to be careful to listen to her heartbeat and not forget that it is as much about the relationship-between-all-things…not just the rocks, plants and animals but all creatures even including people.

Let me sum it all up in a paragraph:

By empowering all of us, we have a chance to take care of the earth so she isn’t just another egocentrically devised distant concept. It all goes back to the beginning. Have the guts to develop yourself in the continuum between ruthlessly and gently. Love one another. Walk in consideration of Mother Earth’s skin. Know that all things are connected. Learn to walk in your birthright, that intuition is the Creator’s voice and it lives in our bodies in ways we can learn to hear, see and feel better. Make the world just a little better by you ing through it.

Note: Peter has a list of ongoing events on his website: www.wolfskills.com.

Peter Wolf: Life-Skills Connecting With the Wisdom of the Earth

Perception and Nature Awareness

Tracking and Wilderness Skills Training

San Francisco, CA - 707.829.0776

Chapter 7

Dr. ROBERT COLLINS

Choctaw, Comanche, Houma, Gullah, Creole

Q: Robert, why don’t you tell me a little about your background?

R: My dad is Houma (pr. Howma) and Creole, and my mother is Choctaw, Comanche, and Gullah.

Q: What is Houma?

R: Houma are the indigenous people of Louisiana. A lot of people say Homer, because they don’t want to say or don’t know how to pronounce Houma, so they’ll say Homer Indian. They use that word to classify because the Houma are predominantly Black Indian.

They got caught up in the ‘Creolization’ because in Louisiana it wasn’t fashionable to be Indian because a lot of Indians were caught up in the slave trade; that’s why you don’t hear a lot about them. A lot of them moved to the Choctaw Nation when the Choctaw moved West-ward because in the 1800’s, during the Civil War, half of the Choctaw Nation sided with the Confederate Army, and the other half sided with the Union Army.

Q: Why would the tribe split its loyalties like that?

R: Those who sided with the Confederate Army were protected under Confederate law and had their own place in the Confederate Congress. They were led by predominantly white and Indian mixed bloods, but they got protection from the Confederate Army because they didn’t have the desire to assimilate.

What happened with the Houma was that a lot of their mothers were African and Native American. Since slavery was ed down through the mother and the tribe was matrilineal, a lot of people - basically whole tribes - got wiped out, like the Naschez, the Houma, and most of the Mobile.

Siding with the Confederate Army gave them protection, and a lot of other people decided to assimilate towards the lighter side and become Creole. That gave them protection not only from being Indian, but that also gave them the whiteness that was necessary to not be seen as a threat.

Q: I always wondered why so much of our Native ancestry is so sketchy or hush-hush!

R: Right! So you have a lot of people who won’t recognize that they’re Houma. I didn’t find out my dad was Houma until just recently. I was going to grad school, and I called Avis, and by random chance I ended up talking to a cousin of mine just by telling her my last name because there’s not that many Black Collins, and she said, “Yes, we’re pretty much all related except a couple of families!”

I asked her, “How did this come about?”

She said, “We have a lot of relatives who are not in Louisiana anymore, who are in Muskogee, in Tulsa, or Oklahoma City.”

I asked, “Why are they in Oklahoma?”

And she said, “A lot of them are Indian.”

I said, “Is that right? I didn’t know that!”

Then I went to a seminar where I ended up running into an old man who was from Louisiana. He was telling me the history of Louisiana, and it just so happened our families were from similar areas and I told him my last name and that I had a big family.

He said, “Yeah, you got a big family, but you guys weren’t black originally!”

I said, “Yeah, we were!”

This guy’s an elder, maybe seventy or eighty, and he’s saying, “No! I’m telling you, you guys were originally Indian! You were Homer!”

I said, “We were what?”

He said, “Houma.”

I decided to do my own research and I looked into a couple books on plantations and slavery in Louisiana, and then I came across our last name, Collins, and how we came about getting it. A man by the name of Monsieur Decaterands had

enslaved the last few families of full blooded Houma and when he died, he ed on those slaves to a man by the name of Collins, and that’s how we got our last name.

Q: Now that makes sense!

R: Yes, and I got to understand why there are some things you just don’t talk about, and why my father was so fervent about being Creole! Now I understand why there are so many people with light skin and long hair in my family, and why, because I’m a bit darker, people would ask me sometimes, “Are you adopted?”

My grandmother is Choctaw and Gullah, and my Grandpa is Comanche, so my mom is Choctaw, Comanche and Gullah, and my dad is Creole.

Q: Where are the Gullah from? I’ve never heard of them either.

R: They’re from the Georgia Sea Islands. My grandmother’s mother was Choctaw, and her grandfather was the one that was Gullah, so both my parents are Black and Indian. My mother’s side of the family is from the Southeast corner where Texas meets Oklahoma near Idabelle.

Q: Idabelle? (We laugh for a while)

R: There’s also Silver Springs, and Paris, Texas, and a little small town called Honey Grove. That’s where my mom grew up, and that’s also where

my grandfather’s people have lived since the beginning of time. That land was given to the Choctaw Nation. The only reason I know so much about it is because I do research on it. My mom wouldn’t explain it like this!

The Choctaw Nation was sent out to survey the land and come back, along with the Chickasaw and Seminole, and see if we’d consider moving. Half of my family split. A lot of them stayed back in Mississippi and only a few of them removed. That was my great-great grand-mother.

When I talk about great-great, and great grandmother, they’re very close, because my family had children when they were very young. There’s only eighteen years between her and my great grandmother, and eleven years between my great grandmother and my grandmother, and fifteen years between my grandmother and my mother.

Q: So they were all still alive when you were born?

R: Yes, so I knew these people; I was able to see them and her sisters, and they had huge families. She had thirteen kids, and two of them did not survive, I didn’t find out about it until recently, because I spent the last half year taking care of her last daughter until she ed away. That was really very impressionable on me, and I now know a lot of things most people in my family don’t know because I was the only one she had to talk to.

When the family decided to remove, they settled along Silver Spring, Red River, and so in those 4 or 5 towns I’m pretty much related to most of those people. I can’t date anyone! (laughter) My grandfather’s people, like I said, had been there from the beginning, but then both sides of the family removed there. My grandfather refused to go onto the reservation, which was made for the Kiowa, the Comanche, and the Apache. They cut their hair and assimilated with the

Choctaws.

Q: What was the significance of cutting their hair?

R: I guess they’d rather ‘die standing than live on their knees’ was something that definitely applied to them, because in order for our family to survive - both he and his wife were very, very, strong people - it was almost necessary.

The Comanches had about 30,000 ponies from the different bands coming together, the government went in and all those ponies were shot. Our band had about 3,000, and they were all shot and sold for meat, sold for feed, and a lot of people died along the way going there, and particularly his relatives that did not side with him.

If you look on the Comanche roles, you probably won’t find us, because the names have changed over time, and it’s only the family who know the names. The Comanche, unfortunately is largely assimilated. The language is slowly dying out, and there are very few people who a lot of what happened.

In my research I’m finding that a lot of Black Indians are the only keepers to a lot of Native history that many ‘Native people’ don’t know about. It’s ironic because, like among the Houma, the Black Indians are becoming the majority who the language, so you have to go to Black Indian people to learn the language since that’s the only place you’re gonna find it.

Q: It all originated in Africa?

R: Yeah, it all originated in Africa. The majority of the people that are in Louisiana are from the West Coast and are Haitian. The slave ships brought them to Haiti, and then from Haiti they were sent to Louisiana, not to mention the French, so there’s a really strong connection between Louisiana and Haiti, and if most people traced their roots back far enough there, they’d wind up in Haiti. So that’s my heritage in a nutshell.

Q: In a NUTshell?! (Laughter)

R: Our family remains largely matrilineal, and the only reason why I keep it simple if people ask me what I am, I say African and Choctaw. I choose African predominantly because I know that we are Gullah, and I know that Gullahs are majority Ebo. There have been people in our family who were not Ebo, but I don’t know their tribe affiliation or their clan affiliation, so I just say Ebo.

Q: And where are Ebo from?

R: Nigeria. My grandfather was very die-hard about his kids knowing who they were, and so was his mother, so I kinda had it from an early age pounded into my head, “Be proud that you’re Black, be proud that you’re Black, but don’t forget your Indian!”

The times that my family grew up in - my grandmother didn’t have the opportunities because she was Red. When she left the reservation, or when she left her town, she was Black. That had a big effect on how she raised her kids because she knew that in our society, and in her time, no one was going to look at a dark skinned person and say they didn’t fit the stereotypical Indian frame-

set, which is predominantly Plains, and Choctaws don’t look like Plains Indians.

My grandpa’s band doesn’t even look like the other bands of Comanches. The faces are not angular, hard - they do have the beak nose, but they don’t have the high cheekbones and the long, silky hair; Comanches have nappy hair. (Laughter) Choctaw have nappy hair and they’re very, very dark people.

So it’s ironic when I’m sitting in class, or when I’m talking to people and I say, “Yes, I’m Choctaw,.” They immediately start looking for these features that might distinguish me as being their typical Indian whereas they’ve never seen a Choctaw person before. We have high foreheads, little faces, and very soft features.

We don’t have anything that juts out; we’re pretty short people….it’s nothing that would really distinguish us as being, “Yeah, that’s an Indian!”

Q: Like the t.v. versions.

R: Exactly. Southeastern people wore turbans, and wore very colorful clothes, and when intermarriage did happen with Africans, there was a lot of familiarity with the dress. If you go back to the southeast, you’ll notice a lot of the older African American people will dress in Choctaw manner, especially in the area like my mom is from.

They wear long, colorful dresses, they’ll wear turbans on their head. A lot of people think they’re trying to reconnect with Africa, but they don’t know! They don’t understand that it is actually a Choctaw design or a Seminole design.

There are a lot of Seminole where my mom comes from too. I tend to go with my mom’s feelings about only marrying Black or Indian, and it’s not a racial thing, it’s a cultural thing. If we start talking about a lot of history, my friend will jump in with something like, “Yeah, when we were slaves, X-Y-Z happened…”.

My grandma might jump in and say, “No, you’re wrong.”

My friend would say, “But that’s what we learned!”

And she’ll sit him down and say, “No, that’s not what happened; not all slaves stayed in slavery! Not all slaves submitted to being whipped, and not all slaves looked like you and me.”

You might have that Indian ancestry in your family that no one talks about, but they won’t tell you where that person came from because during slavery that person only identified with being a Negro, so that’s all they knew.

They may have been kidnaped during wartime and that was the label they were given and if they were identified as being Choctaw or Chickasaw, it was beaten out of them, just like the African was beaten out of Black people. My grandma will go off on that.

We have those differences, and I think a lot of people find it strange because I don’t always agree on what’s being said, but I’m not relying on books as sources of information, I rely on my family who teaches me not to lie. If they’re going to tell you something that they know their kid’s going to repeat, they’re going to

want it to be the truth!

Q: Other than the historical perspective, what are the ways that your background and your culture have been sustained, or carried through your family shows itself in your life?

R: Through food. On special holidays my family will get together and my uncle will to out and get a cow, and he’ll butcher it up and he’ll barbecue the whole thing until his heart is content, and make sausages and stuff like that.

My mom will make cornbread the old way. With the cornmeal and different ingredients, she’ll mash them together and then cook it in water; like hot water cornbread. And then there’s a lot of hominy - like grits, and a lot of people say, “Grits! A lot of Black folks eat grits!” but they don’t know why!

Hominy grits is very Southeastern. Grits was taken from the Indians because that was staple that a lot of the colonists in the early days were fed by the Indians. When Africans and Native Americans intermarried, it also became a big staple of their diet, so when you did have a lot of intermarrying, the diet stayed with it. Sweet potatoes were also big.

I am the first one in our family to reclaim the traditions; to go out and learn songs. First was to learn stories, and to sit and listen to my aunt talk about her life, and to hear her stories and to hear her talk about our family. She went back about 300 years.

Q: Wow!

R: Her sister knew even more, because she sat with her mom all the time and learned all these stories so she was the official storyteller. When she ed on her sister became that, but she’d always say, “Well I’m not too sure,” and whatnot, “but I can tell you this much.”

Q: I’m sorry to interrupt, but do they - I keep hearing more and more that Africans were her long before…”

R: Yeah, definitely! My family would say that Black people were here before the arrival. Some people will say that Black people were here before the arrival of the European. I met one person from South America who was also a Black Indian - Black Carob…

Q: Carob?

R: Carob, yeah. There are a lot of different tribes. Like my great-great grandfather - his mother was Carob. The Carobs were known to be mean so that kind of gives you a little bit as to his character. He did not take anything, and they tried to kill him, they tried to kill his son, and they always fought back. A lot of people in the Southeast believed that Africans weren’t very different from the indigenous people already there, so there was kind of a fusion.

The way that Africans sing in Africa, and the way we sing today, is very similar to the way Native Americans sang in the southeast. For example the vibrato in the voice is a very big prize, so you’ll find a lot of Black Indians singing stomp dance songs which are dances that Indians in the Southeast do.

Some Southeastern people don’t pow wow, and my family was kind of interested as to why I was pow wowing. I’ve come across a lot of Choctaws who’ve said that who notice me by my shirt and the way that I’m dressed because I wear a sash instead of a beaded belt. The shirt’s made by the Choctaw Nation and (they notice) the colors, and the way it’s made.

They’ll say, “No offense, but are you here to prove your ‘Indian-ness’ to people?”

I’ll say, “No, that’s not the case. This is the only method of re-affirmation of my culture and dancing from the earth that I have out here because I’m not back there, so this is my way of saying, “Thank you. This is my way of praying while dancing, and praying back to the Ancestors and sort of showing homage.”

Q: A truly wonderful tradition that is mostly absent in our modern culture!

R: Sorry to change the subject, but a lot of people were saying that Africans were here before the arrival and taught a lot of people, particularly out of Cahokia, which is the big urban area where there’s archaeological evidence that there was a big trade center in North America. A lot of people don’t know about that, but they found artifacts that show African signatures that followed sort of a trade route.

You see it with the making of masks…you see it with the Olmec in Mexico. You have the big heads and broad noses, with very African features, and the only person who’s gone so far as to say that this is of African origin was a man named Ivan van Sertima.

He also saw that the ships and pyramid designs were very reflective of Africa, particularly from the kingdoms of Ghana and Benin I think is the name of it. You have works done in iron, you have work done in gold and stone, but they have very African features.

In the Southeast, some people think the songs were taken by some of the Africans who journeyed to America, and I believe that’s possible, because a man in Norway built a raft called Kontiki, and he sailed across from Ivory Coast to South America in this boat made of rafia reeds generally used by the people from Ghana and Benin, and showed how those boats actually traveled back and forth.

A lot of people stood in disbelief as archaeologists uncovered some remnants of these boats. Most of them are bio-degraded, but they found these materials, not a full boat - the only full boat they found was in a tomb in Egypt - and they were thinking that maybe Egypt could have made it that far as well. These were the times way before any of the European nations were developed enough to travel; this was when many of the European nations were still tribes.

So, I definitely believe that’s possible and it shows a lot of cultural continuity between the Southeast, the coastal areas of North and South America with the west coast of Africa and with the Sudan and Mali also. That’s all that I know about that.

Q: So you named food, and traditional storytelling, and you keep dancing, even though it may not be specifically from your tribe…

R: Yes, and I’ll be learning the language again, which most people only

words and phrases now. There’s still our family in Mississippi who speak the language as their first language, but for us out here, I’m going back to learn the language so I can it on to the kids out here, like my cousins.

A lot of them know that they’re part Indian, or that they have some Indian blood, but a lot of them don’t realize of the culture and that they too are of the blood line. There are some people in Mississippi who I call my ‘tape recorder’ and are midnight black and have no Indian features whatsoever, and they speak Choctaw.

They don’t forget that they’re African, and that shows by the stories and the practice of the religion, and how it is a sort of dual religion that serves many purposes: African ancestors and Native ancestors. For them to be able to communicate their culture in that way and for me not to be able to communicate in that way makes me feel bad, because I feel like something is being lost.

Especially with the eldest generation having ed on already, and now moving into where my grandmother is head woman, that’s coming on down almost too close (to me). One day I might look at the rest of my family and feel that they should know something about where they come from.

Especially in the time we live in today, much of the strength in the Pan-African or Pan-Native movements comes from the diversity, where you have so much difference within one people, it doesn’t give anyone a reason to narrow in and focus in on stereotypes.

Q: Are you finding in some of the gatherings that you participate in that there’s an increasing solidarity, maybe even politically within the diversity, or that spiritually - maybe in those settings, that the intertribal gatherings

are coming to harmony?

R: I wouldn’t go as far as to say that yet. I’d say that slowly, some progress is being made, but just taking our area - the Bay Area or California in general, the Southeastern people stay away, so it’s very rare. I know another Choctaw family in San Jose, and in fact there are a lot of Choctaw in San Jose, but it’s rare for me to meet someone who is Choctaw and who’s really grounded in being Choctaw.

We have a lot of Pueblos and Lakotas. Pueblos don’t pow wow pretty much, so that’s not really an issue and they have a lot of social Indian like in New Mexico and Arizona, but for other northern people, their sole interaction is with white people, and they’ve adopted the views and beliefs of white people. You get Indians who are trying to hold onto their culture and being bred like white people, and they have the same views, the same voice, the same speech, but they don’t know anything.

There’s one person in the community who’s lashed out many times against Black Indians because more and more Black people are starting to say, “Yes, I want to respect that Indian elder; that Indian who was in my past, because we talk about them a lot but we don’t know them.” And I feel that’s the first step in reclaiming who you are. You can still be Black, but don’t place that person into that ‘miscellaneous’ box - that freak occurrence - because there’s a lot of them! (Laughter)

But I find that a lot of the people here are very reluctant to accept Black Indians, and I’m starting to notice that I know a lot more about my culture and my heritage than they do. Like this one woman who was accusing the Buffalo soldiers of coming up and killing a lot of the Lakota was making me angry and I had to tell her, “The only Buffalo Soldiers that I know of never got that far north. They may have made it as far as northern Texas or Nebraska, and if there was a band of Lakota that was in Nebraska, then I could see it.”

I know my grandfather had to fight against people that were his own, and I know that for him that was a bad experience, but a lot of them were mixed bloods and for her to say we’re all the same (is a mistake). I know that she was definitely Black Indian herself, because afterwards she started talking to me about Black Indians on her reservation.

Q: Is that the main historical situation that brought divisiveness into Blacks and Indians?

R: Yes, especially with the Civil War, a lot of Black people ran North. They ed up with a lot of the Indian tribes. In the slave ports Indians and Africans were enslaved at the same time and they were purposefully integrated along where my family is from and on up the East Coast.

So you’ll find a lot of Black communities, like the Pequot, phenotypically look Black. There’s a band of Penobscot that speak Mandingo. Most people don’t about that because that community is isolated. Like in Virginia, the Black Indian communities are very isolated and stay away from everybody else.

When the Civil War split the nation, a lot of people ran north and they ed up with the different bands, but when the Jim Crow law set in, a lot of people found it very difficult, but not only that there was a lot of definition of who could be and who couldn’t be.

White Indians could be up to one/thirty-second, and they got land, they were able to go to Indian boarding schools, get medical care, or they could go to regular white schools and assimilate right on into it. Black Indians had no choice. You’ll see in a lot of Southern laws that if you’re Black Indian you’re

Black. It was the ‘one drop’ rule that effected everything, so segregation became not just between the North and the South, it became a national thing.

People who had Black ancestors found as soon as they stepped off the reservations they were Black instantly. Even today in North and South Dakota, a lot of the Black people and white people don’t get along, but they have a lot more hatred towards Indians up there in some instances than they do Blacks because of the ambiguity of identity and personality. They don’t know how to treat who!

Q: “Who to Hate and How to Do It” now available at your local bookstore!

R: (laughter) Exactly! So it’s like which one doesn’t have a movie coming out. You have a lot of cut throat issues, even for relocation. A friend of mine from grad school’s mother is Lakota. She came here on relocation, but when she got to the Bay Area they told her, “You’re not Indian!”

So she lived like a vagrant on Haight Street for about 5 or 10 years until she was able to work small jobs and stay in the YMCA, here or there until she was able to get back on her feet. Now I think she’s high up in some company, or has her own business.

But now when she talks to her daughter who wants to know about her ancestry, she tells her, “You do that, but be careful when you get involved in Indian stuff because you’re no longer Indian; because you are here. Be wary of Indian functions because they will see you as not being Indian.”

That was very significant for my family too, because even for someone who had

very little African blood like one of my aunt’s, someone who had a lot of African blood, like one of my uncles, they way that they’re treated is the same; all you need is ‘one drop’!

Our tribe is split that way: you have the white Indians, and the progressive full bloods we call them living in the north above Idabelle. And you have the Black Indians living in the area where my family is from, and that band doesn’t vote in a lot of the elections; they’re not considered by a lot of people a part of the Choctaw Nation.

My mom took me out to pick cotton, not to make me feel degraded, but so I’d where she came from. My mom is a head ant in Oakland, so she’s far away from that life, but she wanted me to our roots, to pay homage, and that’s been very significant for me. I the pain, the blood that it draws sometimes that makes one .

My mom was the first to attend a two-year institution, and my sister and I were the first to attend four-year institutions, and I was the first to get a PhD., but every time I go home, I’m reminded of where I came from. Just because I got these letters after my name, I’m no different than my cousin who’s on welfare and doesn’t have anything, and we’re still tight!

Q: It seems like there’s a kind of internal connectedness - where you’re connected to the blood roots of your culture, and there’s an external connectedness - where you’re connected to the sprouting expression of it.

Part of what I’m wondering about is whether the inherent wholeness in many examples of traditional indigenous life can either be re-membered as in put back together, or to re-establish it for those who never had the benefit like you had of being able to stay in touch.

Even if the memories just didn’t stay intact as well, to take that which is inherent as a deep intuition of wholeness and have it spill over into a way of being.

We’re in a modern situation where the political, the practical aspects of it between the Blacks and the whites, the whites and the Natives, the Natives and the Blacks is such a chaos. There’s so many wounds to be healed, but I still feel convinced there is a substantial value to re-enlivening the way of being of the culture.

R: ing is not something that is on this linear continuum. It’s always circular. I think that what a lot of people don’t realize is that ing and recreation is part of an everyday process. You have to be able to recreate certain things…like for me, recreating was part of going back and learning.

I had to recreate myself by asking myself, “Who am I?” And then recreate myself by going and listening to those stories, internalizing them, and asking myself, “How do they affect me? Am I the person who ‘Joe Blow’ says I am?”

It’s been kind of interesting because I realized that there is very little recreation in that because I’m still the nigger that they want to see; I’m still the ‘injun’ that they want to see; I’m still the hoodlum that other people want to see, and that’s not going to change, but what I can do - what’s possible for me to recreate is for me to recreate the truth about myself.

I don’t think that learning the truth is ever a recreation process because I don’t think I’ve been through a metamorphosis. Just because someone was here in North America, and someone in Africa decides to intermarry doesn’t mean that

I’m going through a metamorphosis, that I’m changing. A lot of culture that we had was lost, but I can take what I do know.

The education that was forced upon my family, not only Indian, but Black as well, from the beginning - I can take that education and then take that information about our people and adapt that to who I am and take that back. I don’t look at it as a re-creation, I look at it as a taking back of something that was lost.

And I think a lot of people look at it as being an escape from being Black, but to me it’s something that I can’t escape. I’ve always been African, and I’ve always been Indian. This is not something that I’m going back and trying to do. Just because they were raised this way doesn’t mean they know more, and doesn’t mean that they’re my people. Even for those Choctaw who are white Choctaw - I have run-ins with them too when they ask me, “Are you really Choctaw?”

Q: What does it mean? Or what do you make it mean? How do you hold it? How does it spill over into your life, or how do you enable it to? What is all that from person to person?

R: For each person your ancestors are going to love you regardless, so if you’re connecting to your ancestors through your religion, not some PanIndian god, then I think you’re on the right track. I say that not only from my own personal experience, but coming from other people as well who’ve gone through the same thing of being seen as not being this, of being fractioned out - of being only one-quarter this, and one-sixteenth that, and a hair or a toenail the other.

When you go back to reconnect, they’re going to be there for you and you heal yourself. I’m very active in the community and I love community issues, but you

can’t heal everyone. When people lose sight of that, that’s where the problems happen.

My family was enslaved. Who were they? And when you connect with that, for me anyway, it’s been very, very healing. For the person who’s trying to find out who they are and recreate the connection to it, the action is just to do it.

There’s going to be animosity and people who’ll say, “You’re trying too hard!” and there are people who are trying to escape being Black, and there are people who are trying to escape being Indian, and they stick out like sore thumbs.

I get a lot of attacks and its gotten to the point I don’t even get upset anymore; I just start laughing because I know who I am and I don’t need anyone to tell me. Like some of my cousins who’ll say, “Hey Rob, you’re getting too much into this Indian thing!”

And I’ll say, “Hey, I’m Choctaw, and I choose to do Choctaw things. Why is there something wrong with that? Why am I too much into it?”

I tell them that I still hang out in the hood! When I’m in the hood, I’m the hoodlum that you see; when I’m with Choctaws, I’m the Choctaw that you see. It’s not about wearing masks, and it’s not about wearing hats, it’s the person that I am. You have to know that you have the ability to reclaim that, because I feel that a lot of people, from my experience, are scared. But I feel that it’s my right to take that back, because it was lost.

I think what people are looking for generally is bloodlines. And if people don’t know what their bloodlines are and that’s the connection they’re searching for,

they’ll find it. If their interest is genuine, if their heart’s in the right place I think they’ll find it.

For the person that is reclaiming, ing is the first step, or even just thinking about it is really the first step, and it’ll only improve with time. And seek out those who are familiar to you. I’d have never been told anything by my auntie had I not gone down to see her. She had never met me since I was a baby.

This was my great-grandmother’s sister, and she started saying, “You look just like your grandpa; you look just like my brother!”

And it just starts to snowball. She’d start to tell me things without ever really saying, “This is what you should do.” She’s say, “This is what’s important, I think.”

I think that connection is vital, just given the chaos of today. I think people should find out who they are, and I know a lot of Black people won’t have the ability and a lot of Indian people won’t be able to find out specifically - say the family, but just to know the culture. The resources are there to trace back to Africa or to that Native American ancestor, but if don’t find them, you just know what region they’re from.

There are a lot of traits that are just Southeastern, and I would not mind to see someone out there dancing, trying to pay homage to their ancestors that are Southeastern and African and doing good, rather than trying to say, “I’m more Indian than you are!”

I travel between one state and another - like between Texas and Oklahoma. In

Texas I’m Black, in Oklahoma I’m Indian, or, in Virginia I’m Indian, and in Georgia I’m Black!

Q: It seems like regardless of who you are and how comfortable you are with it, there are going to be so many projections around that! I wanted to go back to something you said earlier about it being vital for people to know who they are in of retracing, and I want to know for you - what it has brought you, even though so much of your family heritage was sustained and contained in your family, the extra work you’ve done to research it has given you a lot more.

So in of what that ‘a lot more’ is, if you could be more specific about what you feel it’s given you inside. Or if you have seen a way that it has changed your relationships to life.

R: Yes, I went through a big identity crisis in high school, and my dad - and I’m not blaming him for it because everybody goes through an identity crisis - but he had a lot to do with it! (laughter) At one point I became ashamed of who I was, and I didn’t feel like I was whole.

I could blend in with one community, and I had a lot of Black Indian friends, and my sister hung out with a lot of Black Indians predominantly Mexicans from Zacatecas, and Chihuahua, and from the Yucatan, and a lot of places where people don’t think of there being Black Indians, but there are a ton of them down there.

I had that reassurance, but after I became comfortable with me, and I think that was after I was surrounded by predominantly white people when I went abroad and they were like, “Who are you?”

They had seen Black people but those Black people were African, and they had not seen anybody my shade before.

I had long hair, and they were looking at me going, “Are you Norwegian? Are you mixed?”

I became fluent in the language, and I said, “No. I have no white blood”. A lot of people were thrown by that and were like, “What are you, what are you?”

And that’s when I began to ask myself, “Well, who am I?”

Q: Good question!

R: The first person who helped me develop that was my poetry teacher and I started writing about my grandmother because my great-grandmother had ed on, and that was devastating to me. We had sent letters back and forth since I was 5 or 6 years-old, and she used to send us beaded belts, shirts, she’d send us all these gifts. Although we’d only visited once and I had only a vague memory of her face, this was someone I’d kept in close with.

I started writing about that, and about my feelings of knowing more who I was. So she (the teacher) told me about books that were written by Native American people and that I should go look at them and I did that. She wrote a Native American poem in class and afterwards I became a pretty good poet. From there I decided to do my own research because I felt that if nobody’s going to help me,

if no one’s going to tell me anything, I’m going to have to go out and talk about it.

My family’s like, “We don’t want to talk about that yet you want to write about it? You’ve lost your mind!” (Laughter)

So I took that upon myself to do research and I started being really inquisitive to my grandmother. We had a huge box of photos of all these beautiful Indian and mixed people, and I’d asked, “Who’s that?”

And she’d say, “Oh, that’s so-and-so.”

Then I’d go read a book about Comanche people and how they dressed, and ask her about more of the photos, until one day she said, “I can’t all these people very well, but I can see it in my head as if it were just yesterday. And if you’re going to do this, then do it with heart. You do it for yourself and not for somebody else. Not to tell other people, ‘I’m Indian!’ Because this is not about them, it’s about who you are. Our family has nothing to do with them.”

Ever since then I kept it in my head, and sat down with my mom and I asked her say, “Tell me the stories that grandma used to tell you.”

She’d say, “Oooh! That woman could tell stories!”

It got to the point that she’d tell them over and over again. I’d make it a point to sit down with her, and I’d spend days on end with my grandma, and at one point

I went down to San Diego to see her aunt. She stood at my door the next morning after I woke up and asked if I wanted some breakfast, and we talked for 24 hours straight!

That was the biggest conversation I ever had in my whole life! (laughter) And she said, “When I talk about your ‘mother’, it doesn’t matter if it’s your greatgrandmother, or your great-great-grandmother, your grandmother or your mother. There all your mothers. There’s no reason to distinguish them all being one level or the other in relation to you because they all brought you here.”

She was very direct in getting my attention in telling those stories and there was no distancing. It was like, “This is what happened to us. You are who we are.”

But it was also, “You’re not one of us yet, because you don’t know these stories, so you don’t know who you are.”

So the first, biggest honor was unfortunately when she got sick, and had to have surgery, and she called me her son, and that brought tears to my eyes. I had so much respect for her, and that one word.

She said, “This is my son.” She didn’t say, “This is my nephew.” She didn’t say, “This is my sister’s great-grandbaby.” She said, “This is my son.”

That for me was the turnaround point in the comfort level (with my heritage). I had always been told, “You’re Indian, don’t be ashamed of that. You’re Black; be proud of that.” But nothing had grounded me like that (part of my) family, and being included. What was so interesting for me was the phases I went through, and the first part of that was not being included, and feeling distant

because I was not a part of the family yet, because I did not know what they had gone through.

I was reading about the rites of age of the Choctaws and rites of age among Africans, and it is very much the same, when you know the stories. To know creation stories, to know life stories, funny stories; talking and knowing where you come from is very pervasive in these traditions.

It was also common for children to go through rites of age before they become of their tribe - so it didn’t matter how old I was, it didn’t matter how long I’d lived and been told, “Just be Black,” or be this person, or that person. That realization killed everything, and that gave me a sense of wholeness. From there I became very determined to reclaim everything that I possibly could from being lost.

I mean, I write to the archives to get Choctaw songs that haven’t been sung in hundreds of years, but I don’t want these songs to be just, “Oh, hey, listen to this!” I want to be able to sing those songs.

I write (away) for Ebo songs and Ebo stories, not to be able to say, “Oh look, this is where I come from”, it’s because I want to know these stories. I want to tell my children these stories, and not only just tell those stories, but also tell the stories that I know now, and then the stories I’ll make up as I live.

So that for me was how I reclaimed it, and just that right there healed my insides and killed a lot of the hatred and a lot of the anger that I felt not knowing but having to live under a label and be ‘this person’, but not with my family - just in society, and after that point, I didn’t care!

Note: Rob teaches at San Francisco State University and can be ed via his website: http://online.sfsu.edu/rkc/

Robert Keith Collins, Ph.D. Assistant Professor American Indian History and Cultural Changes Ethno-linguistics Black Indians American Indian and African American Interaction in North and South America Person-Centered Ethnography

Chapter 8

Lady Scotland - Africa

Lady Scotland was so excited to talk about her background, that she spoke for several minutes describing some events that were key in her mind as to why the links between her country and the U.S. became so repressed. There were pertinent issues she asked me to keep secret, but the other details were offered with equal enthusiasm. I let her speak without interruption for some time.

LS: Right now the country is in chaos. It calms down, then starts again; calms down, then starts again. The rich people left the country and went to Europe and other countries. The people that stayed were just poor native people going about their business; uneducated people with no knowledge, no understanding of the government going through their lives trying to make it from day to day and they’re giving the children money and giving them arms.

And they have nothing else to do; there’s no food, there’s no water, and the children running around experimenting with drugs for the first time and going around killing people. They shoot anything that moves. And I watch the news saying that the U.S. government has so much money invested, but the only money they have invested is in arms and the things they’re trying to get out of the country.

You see? That was a beautiful country. I overheard this white guy telling someone next to me after he heard I was from Liberia saying, “I used to live in Liberia. The country was so clean you could eat off the streets!”

When you look at the good part of Washington, D.C., you see Liberia. They have statues, monuments, the capital, the White House - our mansion was better than the one you have here, build out of marble stone; the architecture was almost the same.

They destroyed all that. They had freed slaves who knew, who went back, and afterwards they had Black Americans who knew. They were starting a group before the war started to put more Black Americans there to teach them. I think they destroyed our history because they didn’t want you guys to know. They wanted to keep everything under cover.

There is so much! Some people think you can kill two birds with one stone, and that’s what they did. They got what they wanted, but they didn’t get what they bargained for, because of the war they can’t get nothing out of the country. I used to work in an area that had with the U.S. regularly.

When they showed something about the country on television, they didn’t show the good parts; they show the itty bitty parts that are messed up, then people are scared and say, “Oh my God, this is Liberia!” Those people built that country. They are my ancestors, they worked hard for that country and the U.S. government destroyed it. I don’t think Liberia will ever be the same.

Liberians are now scattered all over the world, and that’s part of your history; that’s part of my history. That’s part of some of the Indians history, but they don’t want you to know all that. I could get a book and you could read from that and find out some things but you could only find it in African countries because they won’t allow it here.

Q: They won’t allow it here?

LS: I don’t think so because there’s so much! The U.S. has a stronger foothold in Liberia than in any other African country. We use the U.S. currency; our money was like the U.S. dollar, so it was easy for them to get around there - everything was like American.

I was so busy living my own life, many things didn’t at the time, but now when I look back, I think I should have been keeping records. You take everything for granted, even now, not realizing that it will be history some day. Anything could happen here; you never know.

Q: Anything might happen!

LS: This is a strong country and I hope it never happens, because I love America.

Q: So tell me about your grandmother. You said she taught you the crafts.

LS: Oh yeah, she taught me the Indian crafts. I used to make a lot of leather, buckskin things, because we have spring bucks this year with the white antelope with the white tail that curves. I see a lot of men wearing it on their headdress. It’s from Africa - Liberia - and they used to tan the leather just how the Indians tan the leather.

And the gold they’re using grows in Africa, and the natives used to use it for

dishes. They would cut the plates out, then some of them would take the gold, and instead of making pottery they would pour the mud around it and put water in it and keep the water cold like ice water; it was dirt from the earth, but god was inside.

Q: Wow!

LS: Another thing they did was to grind their food like the Indians on the rocks. So my grandmother taught me these things that we either got it from the Indians, or the Indians got it from them. In parts of Liberia they say that Black people were around longer than the Indians or than anybody. The oldest skeleton they found was a Black woman, so everything was started from the Black race anyway.

Q: I’ve heard that Africans were in America long before the white brought them…

LS: Long before they shipped them out - yeah! They shipped them all over there and they were sent here, sent there; told to do this, do that; you know you helped to build this country long before they knew America. (Laughs) They’re going to hate me for saying that; they’ll want to kill me for saying that!

Q: Well. I’m not going to tell them! (Laughs)

LS: I’m just a poor little Black woman (Laughs). I’m serious! If the president were alive, I would take you back there and impart this knowledge; they would tell you a lot of things.

Q: You bring so much with you from your ancestors!

LS: Yeah, but it’s not enough; it’s not enough. I wish you people knew more because it’s not enough. If our (former) president were alive, so much could be learned. It’s sad when I think about it, because it’s like history buried, destroyed.

Q: That’s one of the reasons I want to write about this - to pull out these gems, because many of the people are gone and books are not available…

LS: Yeah, I know. I think that’s a lot of what happened to the history, like the Aztec Indians, the same thing is happening all over the world, then you just get bits and pieces from people, you know? It would be good when it’s going on to start the history books right away,

Maybe after a war you could go back to the library, like when Apollo went to the moon for the first time, my whole school went to the library, and we also studied about Martin Luther King.

I used to cry for days saying, “How dare these people take my people, steal them, bring them back here and do this!”

We used to cry in school. We would watch the movies and see how the Blacks were being treated in America and would say, “Why is it that the president can’t tell all the Blacks to come home?”

My sisters and everybody would say, “Yeah, I’ll take them into my home; look at that one - they look like me, that one looks like so-and-so! Maybe that’s so-andso’s family! We’ll take them.”

So we used to cry seeing these old movies as children growing up. My teacher would say she wasn’t going to play any more tear-jerking movies but we’d say we wanted to see them. After that if you see any white person on the street, we’d want to kill them. That’s how we used to feel.

I one time when I was little I got on a bus, and when I got on a white man and his wife were sitting next to me, and another black old woman got on the bus. A black man was on the bus who had studied in American and come back so he know what was going on there.

So he got up and told that white lady, “Get up! Get off the bus! Go to the back! In your country you were pushing all the black people to the back; now you come here and think you’re gonna sit up in the front. Get up!”

Everybody was angry with this black man for doing that, saying, “Why are you doing that? They’re visitors in our country!”

He said, “You don’t know. In America they’re treating your people worse than this!”

And they were so scared because they were two white people among all these black people. I was so shocked standing there. I felt very, very sorry for them

because it was my first time seeing this. I didn’t even know what prejudice was at the time.

When I worked for the government, I got married to a Black U.S. Marine and he used to tell me how they treated the Blacks over there and I used to say, “Are you serious?”

That’s when I learned about prejudice.

I had to go in the dictionary to understand what the word meant, because at the time, when Liberia was Liberia, they were so nice the whites when they went there to our country. There was never prejudice - never! We thought they were the sweetest people on earth.

My grandmother used to say, “You better watch the little snakes in the grass. The green snakes hide in the grass and you wouldn’t even know that they were there. They’re trying to blend in, but you gotta watch them!”

She was part Native American from the Seminole, so she knew!

Q: Yes, no wonder!

LS: We were young, so we didn’t know! I used to love the white folks and say, “Oh they have such beautiful hair!” My grandmother would say, “You better be proud of who you are! Never put your race down.” I ed that.

Q: From all your ancestries and grandmas and great grandmas, if you had kids today what would be all the qualities you would like to instill in them?

LS: Oh, I would like my children to be like my grandmother because she was very honest, she was very religious; very religious. She would kneel down…. she taught me to pray. They took Christianity back then because she was Pentecostal. She was a deacon in the church also.

But at the same time, she knew how to heal without going to the doctor. If my grandmother got sick, she would heal herself.

One thing she used to say, “If a frog is in me, that frog is gonna stay in me and I’m gonna die with it because God put it there! I’m not gonna let no white man take it out.”

When my grandma was sick she used to go into the bushes and pick medicine. She knew what to pick, she knew what to do because she learned it from her ancestors. She was a midwife; she used to deliver babies, and nobody taught her how to do that. When you have a cold, she could pick medicine and heal you; when you have a high fever she could heal you, and that’s how my grandmother worked. If I knew how to do that, I would teach a lot of people to do it. One thing I would teach them would be the Bible, because the Bible is real. It’s the oldest history for us.

Q: So your Native American grandmother brought religion…?

LS: Yeah, preached the religion to Liberia.

Q: Interesting!

LS: They brought Christian religion. I think the reason they didn’t pick up the Christian bibles here, is that they went back to the old ways because of the white man. They didn’t want to adopt the anything that had to do with the white man; they’d rather keep their own ways.

Even in the old days before Christ, people were doing all kinds of stuff too. They were worshiping animals, doing many things, but then Jesus came and showed them the right way. So they have the same thing going on now.

They have a group in California, with a lady who’s an Apache Indian and a Christian Indian who are trying to help people become born again. We are all children of God. We’re all connected in this world - black, white, yellow - even the Orientals, even though we came from the black race.

Q: Originally.

LS: Yeah! But we’re all connected and I believe the devil is the one that separated us, because people are not evil; people are not bad. The evil is the demon that goes into people and makes them do things, because the Bible says we were created in the image of God, and God is not evil. God is love. Hate comes from the devil.

Say if you were bigger than this woman, and she was your enemy and you had children and that woman wanted to attack you, but she’s afraid to attack you because she knows you would beat her up. But who will she attack? The weaker person, so she’ll attack your children, and that’s what the devil does because he knows if he hurts you he’ll hurt God. So we are children of God.

Q: Everyone.

LS: He taught people to worship him in a different way. We don’t speak the same language, we don’t look the same, we don’t eat the same food, we don’t wear the same clothes, and we worship different ways, but there’s just one God. You see? The Muslim people call him Allah. In Africa they have different tribes.

My family calls him Tabia - means God, Jusu means Jesus. But when I use those words, people here think I’m worshiping some kind of voodoo doctor. (Laughter) I’m serious! But I’m worshiping the one living God - same God - and God is not the original name anyway. (I’m not sure of the spelling of either of those words for God or Jesus)

So it’s been watered down; even the bible has been watered down. If you write a book and people keep copying and copying it, they’ll put in their own ideas. Before know it, you just have a little bit of the book, not the whole thing.

Q: That’s the point - you don’t have the original version.

LS: That’s right, but there is a Jesus, and there a God. How we serve him is up to us. If you believe Jesus is the son of God - that’s how I really do

believe. You believe with your whole heart and ask Him to forgive your sins, you can be born again. No matter where you are, where there are two or three gathered together, He will be there.

Ask Him to teach you; get it straight from the man upstairs. You don’t need to get it from nobody else. Even what you’re trying to find out from Liberia, pray on it. He will send you the right people, because He sees the whole picture, we only see a part. It’s like we’re marching in a band and we only see the people right in front of us when there are so many other musicians!

Every time God is trying to lead us and take us another way, we say, “No! I want to go straight here; it’s so easy - I want to take a shortcut!” He says, “No, you have to go this way before you get to where you’re going.” But we want to go right away to get it, but God knows what’s up there; He knows there’s a stumbling block up there.

God wants you to go this way even though it’s hard, but in the end it will be very useful to you. We could learn so much if we could only learn to listen. We talk, talk, talk so much but can’t listen. Sometimes you get on your knees and don’t even say anything, just listen. God will come down and speak to you.

He’ll show you how to make a living. If you’re willing to work, He will give it to you what to do. Everybody has a gift; that’s what I believe. There’s a reason we’re put into this world, and into each other’s lives. If I’m not here this person won’t be able to make it, I won’t be able to make it, because we’re connected like chains. We’re supposed to help each other.

Q: Interconnected!

LS: Yeah! That’s how it’s supposed to be!

Chapter 9

KOWSPI - Chief, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Most of Kowspi’s way of using the English language has not been altered except where the syntax would have been confusing for the reader.

Q: Kowspi, the title of this book is speaking to the lost art of living in harmony; of living in balance. Where I’m coming from with it, is that there’s an inherent indivisibility in all of life, an inter-connectedness that automatically lends itself to a type of honoring and reverence and respect for all different forms of life.

In indigenous culture, there is an understanding that we’re related to the animals and the trees and the sky and the water; that our livelihood comes from that and we’re grateful for that. In these traditions there’s an understanding of the connectedness of the mind, and the body and the heart, the spirit, the soul and the ancestors.

My hope is that in speaking with people like you who have come from the culture where this way of being has remained undisturbed, the perspective has remained in tact where this wholeness, this inter-relatedness is still the way that you live day to day, and that some learning can emerge.

I wonder if you could speak a little bit about how it is to live in your culture, in your tribe, amongst the people. And if there is harmony, what that looks like, what does that feel like from day to day?

A TRIBAL CHIEF’S IMPRESSIONS OF MODERN SOCIETY

K: See, I’m one of ten (artists). Others, they left and went home. I’ve been here the last two years and I see a life of being that is different from the way I live. It makes the people surprised to see all these things. So when they left going back home to our country, I stayed to see more and learn.

So I say to you as an example, I see all these things which are dead - really. People keep running and running you know - the modern ways. It’s too noisy from the midnight all the way to the next day; buildings and all this.

I have land over there; I have grass, plants, trees, everything. So I came here ready to water the trees, I see there are no trees, no rivers, no fish in the river. I came here to tell the story, “Don’t cut the trees!” Not to cut the trees, not to change the fish or the rivers, (to say that) mining is bad, and things like that.

I came to bring a better life to them. I came here to bring some seeds for change. I see that it’s a new world. NO trees, no nothing. The real way is not here. It is lost; so is the nature. My country is the last place to see it in the world.

(The world is) changing so I feel happy to share what I have and how I live and who I am with the people here. I see what they do here. We can stop and we can share what’s going on now.

For example, people like to go to work. Early in the morning they put the speed on their car. They want to go in a hurry, and then they crash. Now, all life is the same on the earth. At first we were different, but now it’s changing. People are building their mind up and up, destroying what we need. I feel like I have to buy water here - buy cold water in the store. Not in my country. You just drink free.

I feel happy to tell stories. I stayed behind here in California and I’m traveling to tell all these stories, and I hope it will help. Why do the people here keep running with no one to say, “Buddy, you have to stop here. Let me tell you something. You’ve been running very fast and it looks like you need rest.”

This is the last place to see and tell what’s happening here and (talk about) which path you are headed now. I came here so people can see me so we can share this and say, “Come this way.” Let’s stop and look at who we are, at how we have come to this end, and how we’ve changed. You have to see which path you want to do; you have to rewind the tape.

STORY TELLING AS A WAY OF ING

Q: I like that: rewind the tape! Some people feel that there is a memory inside the heart or inside the cells that can be stimulated so that these ways of being can be called out again, maybe through drumming or music; that it will touch something inside. What are your ways of reviving the real way?

K: Looks like telling these stories about what’s happening here and sharing this will make the change. I can see some people still have like a sheath. They have all these feelings. I saw some who are working hard. To me it’s like their tails wag like the tails of a dog.

When I’m talking, when they see me, it opens their mind. When I tell stories it looks like the stories went in and they feel it, and it will help that way; also when we play our music from the earth. But when a person goes by himself or herself and does something and just like to run with their eyes at the front, trying to see how to get this, but no one stays next to you to say, “Stop! See. We come this way.”

We have to go that way, but we have to see while we’re on our way, what we damage to get there? So what are you going to do after? I’m like a real witness. When I talk people can see from which place I came and how I live. It will be proof to them. When they know these stories, they can rewind their mind because they know and can say, “He’s telling the truth.”

THE ‘REAL WAY’ OF THE ‘REAL PEOPLE’

Q: Can you say a little bit more about what the ‘real way’ looks like in your culture? How is it in daily life with your relationships with your children, with the elders, with your mate and the people you work with, how you work - all these things?

K: I live way back in the jungle, and we just come out for the shopping. It’s really hard for us to come out. The way of living in the town people feels really hard. People keep talking that the town life is no good.

When you go out in the town, you have to ask people to do something; you have to pay money. You have to pay money to go to the other house in the other town. You have to use money to buy water, buy drinks, or anything. If you’re hungry, you have to use money.

Most of the young people went to school when some of their parents worked in the government so they stayed there growing up. They’re teenagers. They have nothing to do so their grandfathers, their uncles tell them to go back to the village.

Every year they try going back to the village because it looks like village life is a free life. They only need correction sometimes for something to get solved, and I think that is helpful. They walk around and do nothing with no money and it’s different. Really at home in the village it feels comfortable because they can do anything because it belongs to them; they own all those things.

In the morning they can wake without having anything to do, like cook, and things like that. They just go out, and a banana is waiting in the garden - it’s fresh, just from the tree! If they want to work, they can cut a new garden, so they stay there, cook their meals, come back home and they sleep. They eat something really fresh.

You see all the birds, fish, all these things are moving and you hear the bird sounds. I think that’s why our people are trying to keep this country - it’s a big thing. Like art work you see in the magazines, in the libraries where they tell all our stories - make up stories - about all the things you can discover that way.

They get the new just thinking of the person and then read the books and tell stories; they already step on the real ones. They can’t think about how they’ve been before - their ancestors, their uncles and grandfathers. They read books and people think it’s a true story and they charge when they make copies of that. They keep going and they can’t think about their real nature.

ANCESTORS AND THE ORIGIN OF CLANS

Q: There’s so much fiction.

K: Right. Our people keep all these stories, and instead of making books,

they use the wood and make designs on the wood of Spirits, or the birds, or the snake - all these stories from each clan, each tree. People have their own clan. Like me, I’m from New Guinea hardwood, like teak, mahogany. My bird animal is Cassowari and Victoria crown pigeon - that’s my clan.

Q: What does that mean that you’re from the bird clan - these particular birds?

K: Yeah, there is a special bird where I’m from. It means we have a story behind it. People of my clan were tending to this bird…

Q: They did what with the bird?

K: People of my clan for a long time tell the stories of ancestors and of creation that one of their family has been in this animal. And from the time when it started, these birds arrived with them; it’s like their brother, you know. Some are from the crocodile clan, my mother’s clan is from the eagle and white cockatoo.

Q: So they literally are your family, and you’ve seen the spirits of your relatives inside them.

K: Right, right. So it’s like we own these birds. It’s like a family group. So I’m from this family and this group with the spirits, and my mother’s from different birds. Her brother, her relatives are from eagle clan, and I have other family from another eagle clan - the sea eagle. People own their own clan animal, and trees too.

Q: Okay, so then you have communication with your particular bird or tree?

K: Yes, you can talk to them; you say hello to them. With the birds, there are some type of birds we can’t eat. Long time ago, in our stories we don’t eat Cassowari because they are our brothers, but then the other clans make jokes, trick us, so we keep them like meat. But for a long, long time we didn’t.

If we go to California now here to Redwood City and there are some of my clan’s people there. If I go there they’d ask, “Where are you from, which type of language do you speak, and which clan are you from?”

I’d say, “I’m from Victoria Crown Pigeon.” They’d say, “Oh! This is me! I have land, and after you work, if you want to stay here, I’ll give you some land.” It’s free!

Q: Oh!

K: That’s the way we do. We use to follow the clan, and the animals, to look after and take care of other people. When you start with real ways, then you know all these things. The new way, is the one likes to be richer than the other, and he likes to buy a good car, so he doesn’t even give money to his big son or daughter. It’s too greedy and it’s fast.

The real way is not like that. You share things. You get things when it’s really

fresh and share it. Now you share with me; tomorrow I’ll share with you, the next day she will share with us; not storing things. When people try these meats now, they keep it in the freezer. They stay for a month or for six months or a year, and nothing has any taste. So this is an example that everything is not good.

I have more secrets. The time the earth was fresh with his own people and trees and everything, people didn’t cause this kind of sickness then. Now it’s too much. We can see lots of packets, lots of cans, lots of bottles. So it keeps things really clear when we stop and rewind our tapes - our minds and go back - then you can see all of what’s happening today, and what happened before.

Q: So you don’t have the kind of waste that is made here?

K: No.

Q: Then you don’t have to worry about what to do with it?

K: No. I think it’s a good example so we can see when we started. It helps me too. It looks like my country is the place to see in this lifetime. I think it’ll help when I keep saying this and people know what’s going on here. It gives more ideas.

Over there in my country, there are fewer people and they have more land, plus they have good things like gold, copper. Some companies are going in now to our country and started telling our politicians, “You have to do this.”

They’re going around in the back door and they want money and they’re giving them money, but I feel happy about what I have going. I’ll share it with you because all these things are being destroyed here.

We have to be strong in this! We have to change this. I can see the people start moving and they have this feeling, but there’s no one to warm it, heat it up, put some firewood on it, make it run. I think there are a large number of people who are now thinking about what’s going on and what they used to have on the earth here.

Once people from other from other countries like me come here and share this, I think it will help. We can try to pull this out like an old boat whose engine doesn’t work.

LIVING IN COMMUNITY

Q: When I spoke to Kikosa from Zaire, he said he’d been here for fifteen years and he’s only met individuals, he’s never met a family. He’s been waiting to be adopted by a family. Like you say, when you come to a new place, there’s someone who’ll take you in and will say, “Here, you can have some of my land, you can live with us!”

He feels so alone, and I wonder if you have a kind of extended family there in your culture where everyone knows everyone or everyone takes care even if they don’t know you, and how that affects the health, and the welfare and the wellbeing and the happiness.

K: Having those things has grown with the culture; it’s been built up over

time as the human way. The last time I’ve been here, and this time also, I’ve been seeing people park their car and go inside to talk to the computer or radio, get something to eat and stay inside. If you ask, they’ll tell you they have a friend, but I don’t believe it’s true.

In my country, they’ll just come and play with you, but here, they want to go and run, run, run. The real way from this earth is different, it’s not that way. Stay, see the other people, talk, just share things. Bring things and ask, “Have you tried this, do you know these things?”

Here, they walk away and you might see them again in another month and they’ll say, “Hi. Bye!”

They’re talking to you, but they talk while they walk. It’s different. While they talk, they’re thinking about that they have to go. Every time driving hard, then they crash. They run fast in the road then they crash because they have a lot to think about. They didn’t sleep because they keep thinking about what they have to buy. Their minds always race.

My people are living in the real way. They come in the morning and don’t worry about going anywhere, or “We have no food so we have to go there.” They go to the banana plantation or they go to the river. They pick things there, then they cook some, they eat, bring some home, and then they sleep. It’s free.

If you feel hot, you jump into the river; if you want fish, go out in the night and catch them. I live in a small town, and I came out to a big town to buy a special thing that I wanted for the engine, or for the radio. When I walked around, I was really getting tired to see the town; too many cars, people going in and out of the same store, waiting in line to go to the bathroom or wash your hands. When I go back home I feel relieved - it’s paradise!

Q: So if everything is free, there must be no crime. No reason to fight over things or steal, or steal somebody or hurt somebody.

K: No, no. I’m happy to share all this and tell you it’s changing, it’s developing. I also want to help my people because they are the last people.

EDUCATION AND RELIGION

Q: What does education look like in your culture?

K: Education is good; it’s helpful to give people information in their minds to help protect the country, and to protect the people. There is a way that education can help to keep the culture, I know this. The one group who have destroyed all the cultures is the missionaries. It’s like oppression. Some tell the truth, some don’t. If it’s true, there is only one; if there are thousands, then it’s a lie.

I feel this. First these people come and destroy all the real ways, and that led to what is happening now. They did it first; destroyed all the cultures. Education helps in some things, but only in disguise. The people they call missionaries have brought new religions everywhere.

SPIRITUAL PRACTICES OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Q: Is there what you would call a religion or spiritual belief, or spiritual

practice that’s common to your culture?

K: A thousand times those missionaries went in and tried to ask my uncle to change; you have to live our way. My uncle said, “Don’t tell this, otherwise, you have to stop coming. If you want to come, stop talking and don’t try to change me.”

All our ideas are for the ground, for the earth, for the people here. They gave it to me and said, “You are in charge of all these people, and I give this to you, so don’t put it away.”

So I promised. We know that it’s something that will spoil us, so we try to keep something like a spiritual house. We call it house Tambaran. It’s the design of the spirit house that’s now being built in Pasadena. It tells every story in all the details in different names.

At home we keep these spirit houses and people are trying to make it strong. All the young people now who are going to the town and changing; all these new missionaries who are trying to change things - and it’s a really big problem, so we’re trying to move all the people back to the villages.

I tell the missionaries that they cannot change me and to stop trying. With a strong spiritual house, like House Tambaran, and also the teaching…

Q: Tambaran, what’s that?

K: In English we call it spirits, but the way we believe is that there are spirits, but this is just one name for it, like angels. We’re talking about spirits of our ancestors, and we keep them in that house, and if we transfer, it moves with the people. Tambaran is like a god where people used to keep it in their house as the owner of these people.

Those people used to use them in the yam harvest when they kept in their house; so it’s the house for the spirit. Masalai is a different spirit who lives in the tree and in the water and in the land, or rocks.

Q: It’s more pervasive, a spirit that’s within all of them?

K: They live in the land, in the forest, the trees, the mountain. We call it Masalai; it’s the spirit which stays in the forest, in the jungle. It can be in the ocean.

Q: But they are individual spirits?

K: They’re the ones who come with Nature.

Q: Nature spirits.

K: In modern ways now, in English they call this the wild life area. We call this the Masalai area, which is spirits. They are the people who are in charge of which animals are in there. Humans can go but that’s the place where the crocodile and the other animals hatch the eggs. People are afraid

to go there, because there will be lightening.

Tambaran is the one for the people; that’s the one who stays with you in the house, where you make sacrifices. Mine used to turn into a black cockatoo, and can become a snake.

Q: So it can shape-shift? It can change where it is housed, and you can take it with you?

K: Yeah. He can come. I just say, “I’m going there.” But they already know that I’m there. For example, last time I was here and when we were going to bring these sculptures, the spirit of my father and the spirit of my grandfather and the gods know that I have to come.

We started to carve one huge form; one huge design out of that heavy wood about this size, and we forgot to cover it. In the morning when we came back, it was turned over.

Q: The spirit turned it over?

K: Yes, We didn’t cover the spirit, so he covered himself. This big, tall thing is about twenty meters of New Guinea hardwood. It’s really heavy; you can’t pick it up. We used to get ten to fifteen people to turn it over.

Q: In the visionary art, in the totems and the rocks, (On display in the Sculpture Gardens at Stanford University) are there spirits in there that will

be transmitting their essence?

K: Yes, and their stories out here; they came with it, and their spirits are with them. When we forgot to cover that piece and came back and saw it turned over, it showed us, “They are here now.”

Q: Why would he want to be covered?

K: Because it’s not complete, and he doesn’t like only his face for people to see. That’s why. The whole tree is not carved, so only the face is showing and we say this is him - so he doesn’t like people to see.

Q: So is it that the spirit is kind of guiding the hand that’s carving his face so that the face comes out right?

K: Yes, yes. Sometimes if you don’t ask, or there’s some problem when you start carving this this spirit man or woman, and you try to put a nose, somebody else’s face will come because he’s not happy. When people come and walk around, they will be able to figure it out that it’s still wrong.

The same with the paintings too. When they have initiations and rituals like yam harvest, they have all these spirit figures…

Q: What’s a yam harvest?

K: It’s the same culture, but a different way. People have a huge garden of yam plants, but before planting the yams, people have to have initiation.

Q: Oh!

K: And then they have yam planting. Only when the people fast, will they plant yams. And after that, when the yam is ready, they take it out and the owner of the yam plantation says, first to his clan chief, then to the big chief, like my grandfather, “He has this yam and he likes show it to the people in the spirit house.”

People like the chief will say, “Okay, we have three weeks: one week to prepare, and one week to bring everything out from the forest, and another week for the ceremony.”

In that ceremony, they’re going to separate these yams, share it with all the families in the village, and then most of the yams go to the spirit house. People can play spiritual instruments with a drum player, flute player, and that they call Tambaran.

SPIRIT HELPERS

Q: So those are the spirits?

K: To call the spirits - to sacrifice, to play; to play flute means you play flute for the spirits, to honor them, sacrifice and call your ancestors.

Q: You’re using the word ‘sacrifice’ differently. Most or in many cultures a sacrifice is a type of offering of an animal or something. You’re saying that you’re playing music as a sacrifice.

K: Yes playing the bamboo flute is there. They used to decorate them. There is a name for those flutes; it’s owned by the people, and it’s called ‘words of spirits’. They use them to sacrifice. The flute is the sound of the spirit, and is a song for the spirit.

Q: There’s a spirit in the flute as well, or it comes through the flute?

K: People play and make the spirit sounds, and the spirit used to live in the flute. It brings to people calm and it brings them good luck. Spirits bring more happiness and have power to look after the people.

Q: So the relationship, respect and honoring for the spirits enables them to feel happy to take care of you, and enables you to feel happy to take care of each other and the whole thing just works harmoniously that way.

K: Right, It works. Like me now, if I want something, it will come back to you. If you went back to your house that night, you could have a dream, and it would be a dream of me coming to ask you for something, but it’s not me. It’s the spirit - Tambaran. It’s not me, it’s my spirits coming to ask you to help out because they know I wanted something - that’s how things work.

Q: So they know all the time what’s good for you, or what’s good for the

whole.

K: Yeah. Also sometimes if I leave things behind, like if I leave my shirt or something in here and I go out, then a small snake just the size of my finger will come in front…

Q: To stop you?

K: Yeah. Then I will stop, turn around and go back. It’s just like telling the people, “You have to stop here and turn around. You left something.”

Q: Ah hah!

K: Then they’ll look around, “Oh, yes, yes! My shoe,” or, “My glasses!” That’s how spirits work.

Q: Do they let you know also if there’s something that you shouldn’t do, where they would not be happy?

K: That has to do with your ancestors; your mother, or your aunt, or your grandmother or grandfather. They will come and tell you if you did something wrong. For example, my mother’s spirit used to turn into an owl or a small rainbow, and if I walk out into the night and forgot to close the door, she came flying fast and whipped my ears and face.

If I keep walking she’ll come from the other way (laughter). If I don’t close it, she’ll keep doing it until I say, “Stop! You’re hurting me; that’s enough.” So I’ll walk back and close the door. I love that girl. I know it’s my mother, because she was close to me.

Q: I do feel that there are these types of relationships and communications happening, or that are possible to happen all the time, but people don’t recognize it as such, and so they miss it. They miss the information, they miss the help, they miss the guidance, they miss the in this culture.

K: Yeah.

Q: And probably like you say because people are so busy and they go so fast and don’t listen.

K: You feel that you’re the only one you can talk to because you don’t feel anyone is with you, and you’ve been working hard and are in a hurry to get home. You have to be slowed down to know what’s going on, to notice what’s gone on before (with your ancestors). Otherwise, it’s too much.

Q: Many of the ways of the modern man will not change. They will continue to plan, to sell food, have these jobs, and compete with each other in certain ways. Yet, I’m hoping there will still be ways from a real way of being that can be included; that can come into the hearts and minds of the modern man and change how he lives on the land, and how he relates to his work and to other people.

Your spiritual way of being; your way of being with the spirits is so important, I

wonder if that would be a way to help modern man to plug back in to a real way of being, a way of acknowledging, recognizing, accepting the continuity of life. There is other life than what you see here in this body; there are ancestors there are other forms of life, like spirits.

K: When I came and went to Oakland, there were lots of my skin people and also the other skins - they were really happy, and lots of students were really happy to see this culture. The New Guinea sculptures were really fresh; the stories were something that made them feel very happy.

If people stop being in a hurry on their way to their house, they can see what’s on the way in this moment, and can what happened before, if they stop running.

Q: Right, just slowing down can give the space for things to happen, where the magic can come. Is there a way that you feel that people can become sensitive again to the spirits, to listening, to getting information from other places than the way they’re used to getting it?

K: My people are keeping this spiritual house and it looks like it works. In the area where I live, out in the island, I don’t think it’s going to go away. They have their own house and they’re doing their initiations, and to me it looks like it can continue on.

WORKING WITH SPIRIT AS A FORM OF GOVERNMENT

Q: Are the initiations an important part of it?

K: Yes. It’s an important part to teach because it gives power to the people and to the village and to the community and to the culture; to the hunting life, and living off the earth. It was before with their ancestors and we keep transferring and transferring. With some of the teenagers, some men try to destroy things in the town and follow the new white world ways, and then try to go out in the village and do this.

Q: And we tell them, “We know you did this, just put your name out and let us know that you did it. If you don’t, we’re going to take it to our spirit house and it will be something to answer to.”

People used to know that it’s a strong power. Then sometimes the boy or the man who did these things can it, “Okay, I’m sorry that I did this,” and they can stay friends.

But in the court, out in the law in the new ways of law, out with the magistrate or judge, they won’t tell. They won’t take them to the court. But in the spiritual culture, in the real way, they will tell because if the person cannot tell, he’s in real trouble.

Q: With the spirits?

K: Yeah, he will have a bad time. It helps for people to know that we have the real way, and that it has strong power. It’s a way of life to protect the earth, the village, and the people to have rights.

Q: It’s a natural governing system that keeps everything working. They know the spiritual force works.

K: They have their own government. My grandfather is in government; he’s like an officer, like Prime Minister or President, so he tells what to do and they do it. Everybody, even the big men - they’re his people, his workers.

Nowadays if you tell one boy, he’ll say, “What for? Why you can’t do it?” He’ll say, “I’m not your worker!”

They want a boat, they want a motorcycle; they don’t care about the respect of the real way. Those people listen to who is the chief. It’s a group, so you have to follow this.

THE ROLE OF THE CHIEF AND FUNCTION OF INITIATIONS

Q: So your role as the chief and medicine man is to keep the peace, or protect the people - what is your role?

K: My role is that I like people, I like to help, I like medicines and I like the real spiritual way of life. My uncle and my grandfather like other people, and if they ask and need help, they have to help. They help them to tell their stories. Other people don’t know how to talk about their land and culture.

They’re smart. They talk and try to get the other people’s land. Our way, our rule is to take care of these people. In our way, it’s different. People say, “If you go to

this area, call this man if you need help; he’s a good guy.”

That’s the way you become a good president. The women also are used to sharing their ideas. She can tell her brother or her husband her ideas, and the husband can go and share good ways to rule the people.

Q: You mentioned about the initiations in your culture, and I wonder what they are and how they relate to your life, and your spiritual life? If any of them can be transferred to the modern culture - is there a similar type of initiation or honoring of the bridge between man and the spirit world?

K: Yeah, I think it can. Initiations are something they did to help a person to have power. When he sacrifices to do something, it can happen with the spiritual (realm) so that the power can go through.

When you cut (the skin) it, the bad blood will leave, and you’ll have the real (positive energy) ones from your ancestors and your grandfather. Then, while you’re still in the initiation area, the men can build up new skin, new looking face.

Before they go in, they have to cut your hair. It takes a long time for the initiation. In the old days, it takes you a year, so every three months, you have to do something. Now they have school, high school, community school, and government work, so that’s why they just use two weeks. Sometimes one and a half weeks so they can put sores in the body but they only put ‘sort of’. They put on their shirts, and leave.

Initiations are hard. It tells people how your people, your country, your territory

runs - your way of living, and which things are bad. It notifies you of the good ways and the bad ways and how you can be a leader; how you can be a good person. It tells how to look up to your people, and the way you protect this earth. Initiations tell all these things.

Q: So the information comes through the initiations?

K: Initiations remind and keep telling you about your clans, and stories, where you came from, where your mother’s from, how your ancestors arrived.

Q: It must help to set the direction in life. So many people here are looking for their life purpose, and it sounds like this initiation process connects you to the whole lineage and makes it really clear.

K: Right. I feel happy to tell all this. To me, I see so many things are broken down; where some of the wood is coming loose from the buildings. Because so many people copy from these here, now it starts to happen in other places We have this culture now of the real way for the earth, but here it’s already gone.

We have this culture now for the earth and I feel proud to walk on the streets and when people say, “Hey, where are you from?”

And I say, “From the jungle!”

Q: You’re like a prized natural resource! (Laughter)

THE POSSIBILITY OF MODERN DAY INITIATIONS

Q: I want to ask one more question about the initiation. Is there a way that modern people can either duplicate or create a blood offering to the earth for themselves, or is there a way from your people that someone can come and show and lead such an initiation to help people get back in touch? How can it happen?

K: It can happen; it can. Lots of white people nowadays have come to the country and have had initiation now. I have a friend from Israel who I taught for a tour-guiding course. Before he went back home, he was in an initiation. It’s really something and I’m proud to tell it. I went back and told some of the women there that I saw half of all our people in this world are lost. They’re trying to come back.

We have a blind dog in the house where I live who’s called Sugar. He’s sweet, but he can’t see. He walks around banging into the door, the walls, because he can’t see. So now the people do this. They run, run, run, but can’t see.

When you’re in the forest with all the wildlife, and the earth, you can’t get lost like that. You’re with everything. When you try to go to the modern world, new life, new way - damages everything. A house has to come up, so (they) knock everything down; no trees, no birds, no nothing. You just work for one thing: money, money, money.

I went back last time and told my people that people here are lost. I see the lights

in them. Most of you people here don’t see because it’s closed and you have dark eyes. Once you see this house, this country, you’ll see that you got lost. This is not a huge piece of land, it’s an island, but New Guinea is the 5th island and has the 4th biggest river in the world - the Sepik River.

We have 700 languages, and out of 700 the Sepik River has 70 villages. My village has one language, called Kwoma - my language group. Our spirit house the worship house is painted with all different colors inside. Another village’s spirit house is just a big building with decorations on the leaves outside with no painting inside. They have two stories, so when the river floods in rainy season they bring everything upstairs.

Also they have small mounds, so when it floods all the chickens go up on the mounds and the rooster goes up in the branches of trees. In planning the sculptures, we carve the same as is life. We carve the Sepik River, the water going in on a current, and our mounds and plants. It’s beautiful in the night.

Q: It’s far away though, isn’t it? Visitors don’t come so often, do they?

K: Not so much.

Q: It’s probably better that way!

K: The thing is, if we don’t start having tourists it keeps the trees and the wildlife safe.

Q: It’s fortunate that you are the chief and can continue to protect your people, the earth, and your culture there. I hope it works in the way that your stories have an impact on the modern world, rather than the modern world increasingly impacting your way of life.

*

While in the U.S. Kowspi and a team of sculptors from Papua New Guinea were commissioned to place some of their work representing their culture in the Sculpture Gardens at Stanford University. Authentic Wood from their country was shipped to California for this project. Afterwards, they all returned to their homeland.

Chapter 10

ZACHARY RUNNING WOLF BROWN

Blackfoot

Z: I’m Zachary Running Wolf Brown and I was born in 1963 and I’m from the Blackfoot Nation. My current occupation is working with the American Indian Public Charter School here in Oakland California. I’m a community member and Native American activist. I am also skilled in carpentry and culinary arts.

I’m now currently working on a documentary which is featuring the relocation and termination of Native Americans in the 1950’s and 60’s. I was adopted by European descent parents. I have a brother who is of Japanese and Hawaiian descent.

Q: How did you wind up in an orphanage?

Z: It’s not quite certain how it happened, but my mother was out on relocation, which is why the documentary is very personal for me. She came to San Francisco - I was the first one born, and the only one given up for adoption. I just found her 4 years ago. I think she gave me up for financial reasons. She gave me a note where it said I could always go back to the reservation if I so choose, but once on the reservation, it would be pretty much impossible for me to get off, so I found the way she gave me up very irable on her part

Q: What does that mean, “Once on the reservation it’s hard to get off”?

Z: Well, reservations are put pretty much on wastelands, unwanted lands in America where there’s hardly any employment, education; any means to advance themselves in the modern world is pretty much gone. There’s a lot of nuclear waste put on our lands; we’re basically the low persons on the

totem pole. It’s usually very far from any urban center. The nearest town is 250 miles away which is Great Falls, Montana so it’s very hard to get into the ‘real world’.

Q: How do you get any supplies or medical help?

Z: Reservations are set up so we keep reliance on the Federal Government for funding and education, so that always limits us as far as what quality they’re going to get us. What kind of food? In the 50’s and 60’s our main course is fry bread, which is flour, water, and lard to fry it up, and it’s very bad for our health so we have a high rate of diabetes and constant health problems because our diet is extremely bad.

Q: Do you go back and visit the reservation a lot, or did you not see your mother? Did you know who she was?

Z: Well, the adoption agency kept the information from me for thirty years. We had petitioned the adoption agencies for 17 years because there were Native American scholarships and other opportunities. We kept on fighting even after I went to college.

I attended Junior college at Merritt and Laney, getting two AA degrees and went on to San Francisco State where I’m working on my B.A. degree. Even after I discontinued my education, I was still fighting for my number for my children. My adoptive mother was encouraging me. My adoptive parents were extremely ive in finding my mother and after we found her they were ive of Native rights, even to this day.

Q: Why was it difficult for you to get a number?

Z: They didn’t want me to find my real parents for fear they might want me back. That was their official statement. I think it was because they wanted me to assimilate and to not be Native American.

Q: Who is ‘they’?

Z: The U.S. Government. This is what relocation and termination is all about: the dismantling of Native American tribes and reservations in the 1950’s and 60’s. The government promised us white picket fences and education if we would move to the urban environment in San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago, and other cities.

When we moved, there was no infrastructure. There were no Native American community centers, basically no except for other tribes helping each other out. It was a great big lie so a lot of people returned to the reservation, but a lot of people returned without their land which they had to sell.

The reason they had to sell it was the U.S. Government decided to do a termination plan, which was to take the Native American lands out of Trust, but as I said, these were inhospitable lands. What would happen is that they would give 400 acres to a family and then the government would demand property taxes which a Native American family couldn’t afford - paying property taxes on their own land.

So they sold 12% of their land between 1954 and 1958. They lost 12% of all reservations, which was 1.6 million acres.

Q: And what stopped that process?

Z: Fortunately, there were some sympathetic people within the U.S. Government, like the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) which started to see the dismantling and the Native Americans started to stand up and say, “We’re selling out our lands; we’re losing it! We can’t go on like this!” So there was finally enough public pressure to stop this, but not before we lost 12% of our lands.

Q: Were you able to be in at all with your culture during the first years of your life?

Z: Basically I was the only Native American who graduated from my high school at Berkeley High of 3000 people in 1981. So I didn’t get in touch with any Native Americans until I was 21 years old. It was very hard to find Native Americans in the urban setting unless you really go for them.

There were other problems. I had an identity crisis growing up in a white family because I looked brown, so I had struggles with who I was; whether I should play the white culture game and get the BMW, two cats, a beautiful wife - so I had a hard time with that which got into drinking problems. I got into drugs but they weren’t my main problem; my main problem was alcohol.

I’ve given that up since I found my culture, and what helped me heal was finding my culture 4 years ago. Finding out who I was, and that was the real pain beforehand - I had no identity. There was no place in this society to let me be myself - such as a warrior, a giving person, a protector; that wasn’t considered to be an asset.

What was considered to be an asset was to make lots of money, to hoard, and to not look out for people, and to buy houses and use and abuse. That’s not part of my blood or my instincts. I this a great deal for my drinking and for traveling a lot. I’ve been to 46 different countries, and I’ve been around the world twice, trying to fit in somewhere.

Little did I know that fitting in could have been right here in Oakland, California as far as Native Americans are concerned, yet I went around the world and traveled tens of thousands of miles to find myself and a lot of the answers were right here.

Q: One purpose of this book is to speak about some of the aspects of indigenous culture that are inclusive today that have helped keep many forms of life sustained for thousands and thousands of years simply by a way of being.

I’m curious to hear from the voices that have been disenfranchised yet still carry the culture in their blood. I want to hear how that impacted your daily life and how you negotiated that difference even though you weren’t in that cultural setting anymore.

Z: I always was a giver. When I was 6 years old instead of trick-or-treating to get candy for myself I went out and shook the can for Unicef. My adopted father was also a very giving person so some of it is from him, but a lot of it is in my blood. He is a Quaker and avoided the WW II draft.

I was always giving and would wonder why people would always take and not give back. For example, there were a lot of frustrations with nobody caring about

the environment, with nobody helping one’s brother or one’s sister, and I still have those frustrations, but I found the culture which is mine.

Q: Are there other aspects of the culture in of spirituality, or the use of the language or arts that you’re re-integrating into your life?

Z: Well, the one thing that I will say about Native American culture is that it tells you to always be aware of your surroundings; always watch what you do. If a bird is killed on the side of the road, I’ve seen them stop and do a tobacco prayer over it. There’s always a certain respect. If you take from - if you sit down and eat, you thank the animals for providing nourishment for you, and you give them respect.

It’s not about going to church on Sunday and getting forgiveness for your sins throughout the week; it’s about always trying to walk right 24/7 every day every week. Even if you mess up, that’s okay also. It’s to learn and keep on walking down the Red path, down the Red Road. We’re all fallible so we’re all understanding about that.

But always try to consider your fellow Beings - the animals, the streams, the Earth - it’s everything. When I start up a car I always try to think about, “Do I need to drive?” The consciousness of the Native American is incredible; it goes to every level, every aspect of life. That’s one thing that always keeps me aware about my ego - am I getting out of control, what am I doing certain things for; is it for me, or is it for my people?

As a warrior, or as a protector of the clan, I have to watch myself. Am I doing it for my own pocket, for my own ego, or am I really doing it for the elders and for the children I claim I’m doing it for? And these questions I answer every day; I wake up for. It keeps me in check.

Q: What are the emphases in the American Indian Charter School that you’ve noticed?

Z: As far as the charter school is concerned, the reason I’m fighting for it so hard is because I was adopted and didn’t have my culture so the way I look at it, there’s 69 children up there who possibly could go down my drinking path that I can prevent from doing so. That’s one of my motivations and associations.

The director has a program which is in Native American aspects whereby everything is in a circle. Everything affects everything else. For instance if we do cooking class, I’ll be teaching not only the aspects of cooking, but mathematics as far as measuring, reading a recipe, English, mixtures, if there’s chemistry involved, and so on.

It’s really applying it to every subject in the classroom to everything that has to do with daily life. When I went to school I would always question, “Why do I have to be in this English class?” and nobody ever told me, “It connects with other things in your life”, and the way that he’s teaching it - that everything is connected.

It gives you much more of a wanting to learn that skill because it does effect and I think it’s the right way. Being Native American, I also just thank the Creator that there IS something bigger than you and thank goodness it’s not just for me.

There’s one other point that I wanted to make about growing up in this culture. One of the things I learned as a young individual is about competitiveness. Where we grow up instead of respecting our fathers and learning from our

fathers and mothers and our grandmothers, the basic deal was to make more income and to make a ‘better and better life’. I find that really disturbing.

That’s one of the big differences between this culture and the Native American culture is that we respect our elders instead of trying to compete with them and make more money.

Q: And then isolating them. It’s that whole concept of living a fragmented life and how that fragmentation is a result of trying to make a better life while being actually counterproductive.

Z: Oh yes, it fragments the family!

Q: It fragments the workplace, it fragments society, it fragments everything.

Z: Yes.

Q: I wonder if the charter schools are enabling the families to come back together, enabling those values to be reinstilled, enabling the cohesiveness within the urban setting?

Z: Yes, I think so, and the one thing in our charter school that’s encouraged is the parents participating in the child’s education. So it’s also connecting that your parents also have the knowledge and your parents are your teachers, rather than trying to get away from your parents to create your own life and your own sphere.

There’s knowledge with your parents and your grandparents that should be respected and also your parents should be responsible for your education. It’s not like public schools having the parents stay at home with attitude, “We’re the professionals and we know best for your kids.” This is where you get fragmented; the loss of culture, the loss of family, the loss of respect.

Q: Do you have more of an emphasis on practical knowledge in of what is being given at the schools?

Z: Yes, one of the things with me being a chef is teaching Native Americans how to eat right. In the neighborhoods where we come from there’s no produce, and it’s very hard to get the correct diet. You get a lot of sugars, and we are genetically not used to sugars so we become diabetic.

Alcohol also has a lot of sugar and we can become very addicted to it, so it’s very important to teach the children when their mothers and fathers are away how to help their brothers and sisters to seek nutritional ways. We also teach them how to garden and grow their own vegetables and become close to Mother Earth. We have a garden at the charter school.

To get your hands down into the dirt as a way of keeping our children in touch with Mother Earth is important.

Q: It seems to be really essential in the values of Native Americans and indigenous people in general that the children are very important, and the elders are very important. I wonder if that gap is starting to be bridged.

Z: Now with the coming trend of the healing of our Nations, more and more people, including me are going back to the reservations in the summertime and really seeking to get a small piece of our language back. A lot more people are moving toward that way because they realize it’s healing.

Native Americans are very proud of their culture. I think we’re the luckiest people on earth. I wouldn’t trade my culture for anything. I see a trend in going back to the reservation. When I was in Glacier National Park I felt warmth all around me, and in the parking lot I really broke down and cried for an hour because I knew I was home. That’s what I call home because it’s the home of my ancestors; where my mother was raised, my grandmother, and thousands of years of generations of my people.

I found my parents by mistake. I found them through my brother. One of the people at the adoption agency asked my brother if he had a brother named Zachary, saying that they’d had notices for 17 years and they think it’s a crime. They told my brother to have me give them a call and he would give me my last name, which was Running Wolf. There were 5 Running Wolfs in Browning, Montana and I called each of them. The fourth number knew my grandmother, and by accident I found my way home.

Q: How was that?

Z: I when my brother said he’d found my mother I broke down and cried for an hour and a half. The crying showed this pain that I’d actually lost my culture; it’d been taken away from me and my parents.

So it was difficult, and it was also difficult because nobody told me how I’d feel going back. I was medicating myself by drinking and also my mother and my sister were drinking. We didn’t deal with the emotional like it should be, and I’m

still recovering from that car wreck.

I read a report later that 9 out of 10 adoption cases that return home are thrown back out by the mother through the pain of giving up their child, which is very prevalent in the Native American community. I have sympathy for my mother but still it’s another abandonment issue. Even with my adoptive parents, my mother abandoned me for a different boyfriend; my father because he didn’t think I was pulling my own weight. My trust with women is pretty much at a low because I deal with abandonment issues.

These issues are very strong with Native American children. When you say, “Get out!” adopted children take it in a very bad way. I feel that the U.S. system to this day hasn’t dealt with the situation correctly. We are put out on a doorstep at a very young age and we always know it.

People always ask me. “Did you know you were adopted?” and I knew from minute one. In fact, my mother had a journal which she kept and when she came to have an interview for the adoption she said that the interviewer said, “This kid knows exactly why you’re here, and that you’re going to be his new parents.”

Q: How old were you at the time?

Z: I think I was 6 months old.

Q: You probably knew even in the womb the something was up, maybe not in words, but through the heart.

Z: Yeah. There were other problems with adoptions that have a cross-racial background. I wouldn’t bring friends home because they’d say, “Those aren’t your parents because they’re Caucasian and you’re dark!” Kids can be very vicious about that. So I knew I was adopted.

Q: It actually changed your social structure from the very beginning?

Z: Oh, yes!

Q: Have you been able to adjust or to heal from that level of disenfranchisement or lack of belonging?

Z: Yes, going back to the Native community has helped immensely. I do community work - I don’t get paid for it, but the payment is healing. I don’t feel like I sacrifice my time for the Native community, it’s my job; and it lets me walk in a very beautiful world and it makes me heal. That’s payment in full. There’s incredible beauty in the Native American world.

Q: Do you feel that the wisest or the sanest thing for the indigenous people to do is to find ways to assimilate or incorporate their values, or to move back toward sovereignty?

Z: I think that’s a very complicated question. Some of the school children have come to me and said that I’m a good example of how two cultures can coexist. Not necessarily assimilate but to be able to work in both worlds, and to teach our children that we can do both. You can get your education from the university and you can hold your culture when you come home. Even in the workplace you can still hold your values.

Nobody’s really shown that you can adjust to both cultures, and so Native children either go back to traditional values or they get disenfranchised and go into the corporate world and do the best that they possibly can. The third option is that they medicate themselves out of total frustration which was my route.

The importance of the charter school is so that we can combine all the learning of the European cultures into our own way to make it meaningful for us; to make it circular. Everything coexists for a reason.

Q: It feels like because that is a more natural way of being, the wholeness itself is what is healing; healing and wholeness are synonymous. Whites are not doing very well. They’re functioning like disenfranchised people themselves and are falling into depression, all kinds of disease processes, and substance abuse for very similar reasons. They just don’t have a clear understanding of why.

Z: Yes. I think with the New Age that the trend in white culture is going into more Native, Tibetan, and more spiritual ways because people are getting disenfranchised going to the office and making big money but having no fulfillment besides being able to eat at Chez Panis, and being able to manipulate and control people, which I think is very hollow.

Hopefully it’s contagious that it’s time to move away from manipulation, drugs and alcohol and start to heal because as I look out for Native Americans, I also hope to look after all races. There is an ecological fight now. They say that in 40 years the world’s population will double and we’ll be eating ourselves; we’ll be living on top of each other, so we all have to step up and find ourselves concentrating on what we’re leaving for our children.

Q: I wonder about the environmental issues because they’re just as important as the family issues. There isn’t an orientation that includes the earth as part of the family, as part of life - your sisters and your brothers.

Z: This is why we call it Mother Earth. We cleared that, we pray to Grandfather, we include it as a family, we get the connection; everything is connected and then we must act responsibly.

Q: ‘Only take what you need’, for example.

Z: Yes. Hopefully a Native American way of looking at things will help people be conservationists, and to be a warrior and stand up. I don’t mean a warrior in of violence, but a warrior as far as being a protector of the family, of their culture, of their tribe. And this goes whether you’re Irish, or you’re African, or whether you’re Native American. You really have to step back and find your family and then you’ll start to find yourself.

Q: I wonder if this government were subscribing to those values of being protectors who really took care of the people and the earth instead of vested interests who took care of themselves, whether we’d be in this crisis at all. I wonder which ways the mainstream - so to speak - if given the opportunity, could reverse that direction.

Z: I think so. I saw this one movie about the Quebec Hydro-electronics who were selling electricity to New York City, and what the Native American tribe did was to take one of the Kennedys up to the river and say, “We don’t want you on our side. We just want to let you see our side.”

So they took him down on the river and let him see what was going to be ruined if they built a dam. The Native Americans didn’t say any more than that, and at the end of the day he made up his mind.

I think we need to take corporate people out of their white air conditioned buildings and out to the rivers and streams and say, “Do you really want to lose this? Is it worth a second BMW or a house in Monte Carlo?

I think all cultures have it instinctively in them, they just need to find a way to be told about it, to get re-attached to Mother Earth, to see, “Oh, that will be a catastrophe!”

Q: Exactly! That’s one of the fragmentation symptoms is that if you can objectify reality, then you can manipulate that object in any way you want without recognizing the results as being part of you, part of your life as well.

Z: That goes with the Brazilian rainforest. We have to find a way of economically ing the farmers who are cutting down the trees because they’re poor. We made a mess of the whole world and now we pour the responsibility on the poor farmers when we for 200 years in this country have done mass destruction. We are all responsible for trying to find a way to subsidize these people who are at economic ends.

Q: Some people blame the cows simply because it takes so much from Nature to them.

Z: To feed the cows?

Q: Yes, to make a hamburger or whatever shouldn’t have to draw so much on Nature to create an imbalance.

Z: Like I said, I hope there are more warriors. There are Native American spiritual leaders who don’t own house; they just travel the world to spread the word. It’s not a sacrifice. They know it’s right and they do it.

We need white medicine men, we need black medicine men, we need people who will not just contribute a hundred dollars at Thanksgiving and a thousand dollars at Christmas time and say, “I’m done; I’ve done my share.”

No, it takes people giving maybe 40, 50, even 60% of their income and some people giving up their entire income and making it their life ion, because a thousand dollars here or five hundred dollars there is just not gonna do it.

Q: So many things have been set in motion in this country or in Western culture in general in of Capitalist thinking, I wonder if so much of that is not going to change quickly enough or radically enough to re-instill the type of balance to avoid crisis in a few years. I wonder what type of compromise can be reached?

Z: I think that’s a very good point, because I think compromise is the best we can hope for. We can’t turn around a Capitalistic society. So we have to educate the people who run the big corporations that we can have a profitable gain in their company and work with us and make a balance.

We should be in some way giving the companies incentive to conserve, or to see our way and to be educated. We can hopefully turn the Capitalistic approach enough so that we can survive and our children’s children also have another way instead of this insipid scientific world which thinks they know the best way and can reinvent Nature. This is a very sick thought that we can put pods out into outer space and that we can grow vegetables; this is insanity!

This is like Star Wars that we’re going to shoot down nuclear weapons - this is just crazy. Then we’re counting on scientists to reinvent the plant; to take what has run its course for millions and millions of years. We think we can recreate it. This is what has got to change: humans have to take a humble attitude toward Nature. We’re just a part of it, we’re not the rulers of it.

We think we can recreate everything; with genetics we can clone, we can eventually figure out a medicine for all the wounds we’re making now. Instead of cutting ourselves, let’s just not bring out that knife right now, let’s put it away. Then we won’t need these scientists in ten years to make an emergency solution.

Q: Do you see any of the urban Natives imitating Capitalists?

Z: Yes, definitely. There’s movement toward it because they never had money, they never grew up with power, so some of them do get corrupted with money. Controlling, being a chief, an urban chief - yes, there is the urban sickness in many Native Americans. But that’s part of being so oppressed that you oppress your own. Instead of realizing who the real enemy is, we bash each other.

That’s part of our sickness; that is part of post traumatic stress syndrome which all Native Americans carry with us. People don’t realize this. I had a talk with my father the other night about how he’d never understand what it’s like to be

Native American, and I said, “You don’t wake up in the morning and realize, “This whole land was ours!”

You don’t wake up in West Oakland to the emergency centers that we have put up for ourselves to survive because it’s all been taken from us. It’s a very harsh wound that I’m still trying to deal with myself because I get so frustrated riding through neighborhoods that are 80 - 90% Caucasian and realize that they don’t care what’s going on. They don’t care about the people who inhabited this land, and that we’re living in the ghetto and that we have two jobs and very much struggle.

Q: What does post-traumatic stress syndrome look like? I know you mentioned alcohol, in-fighting; what are some of the other ways that it shows up in your lives?

Z: It shows up in how Native American suicide is up. You find kids who have cigarette burns on their arms. You’ll see Native Americans wearing long shirts because they’re ashamed they have cuts on their wrists and selfinflicted wounds because they don’t think they’re worth anything.

They don’t have the spoils. And their way of life in looking out for the other person is not respected in this community and so (it shows in) the total frustration of their way of life being looked down on.

So they inflict it on themselves through alcohol, highest AIDS cases, unemployment, our life expectancy is 47 years old, where the average family is somewhere in the 70’s. So that’s pretty much what it’s about.

Q: I wonder what the priorities are in the community in of creating change. It feels in a way that all these things need to happen simultaneously, but is there a list of priorities in of preparing the community, educating the public, helping to restore the environmental balance. There are so many important issues - is there a unified voice?

Z: I’m also involved with issues that affect minorities and women. Some people say I spread myself too thin but it’s tough to prioritize because my culture is very dear to me and I need to heal myself before I start to look outward.

I have a lot of people who try to keep me in check as far as talking with me and trying to prioritize, and it’s tough because in a way it’s kind of racist just to look at Native Americans and their healing, but we’ve been so abused that there aren’t enough hours in a day to help us. It’s a tough one, and hopefully more people will get involved with this.

Q: Political and legal issues are pretty important as well, and one of the concerns that I’ve had in looking at this for any of the disenfranchised whether it be through handicap, race, religion, whatever it is; whether or not in order to gain equal rights would be to recover what they’ve lost, would you wind up recreating the type of mentality that you’re trying to correct. In other words, I wonder if you’d wind up creating a fractured existence while you’re trying to heal the fracture.

Z: What do you mean by ‘fracture’?

Q: What I mean is that you can’t help but be completely outraged because so many things are going on that are unjust, and in a way you need that as a kind of motor to drive through the obstacles. In another way, so many

people find that when you do get out there and fight, particularly the legal battles, that you wind up having to fight in the same way that the system fights, and it winds up making you like that system.

Z: Yeah, there is a fine line, which is why people have appreciated my knowing how to fight within the European structure and be able to hold my spirituality and not let your ego, or your pocketbook, or manipulation of people - power - and that goes into sexual power with women, or it can be the reverse, with men. So there is a fine line of abuse and I think a lot of it has to do with the way we’re brought up that this is just our job; we’re protectors, and we’re nothing more glamorous than anybody else in the tribe.

This is what we do and we’re respected for it, but somebody who sets up the household whether it’s a woman or a man, has the same respect. So a lot of it is holding your own ego in check and realizing what you’re doing it for.

I have a small little checking device which I invented myself which is, my right hand is my elders, my left hand is for my children, for our children, for everybody’s children. When I go into it being questionable whether I should speak up, I press both hands and if I can answer both hands for the elders and the children, I say something.

Someone corrected me the other night in the use of the word sacrifice because it means somebody owes me something, and that’s not what it is. I’m honored by the tribe who puts me forward and allows me to do the work that I do. That’s something that you treasure more than anything else.

We have seen many cultures communities have leaders that break apart. It’s a very tricky, tricky thing to conquer and hopefully if I haven’t already found, I

will find a way to check myself and to help others who will come into my position of influencing other people.

Q: Right, I’ve spoken to some people who’ve felt like staying away all together from the way the system works and are just doing the work in the sweat lodges, in sundances, in ceremonies and prayer, and letting the change happen through those mediums, and others just don’t feel that way at all.

Z: I think you have to have both, because the traditionalists ground me in telling me there’s something greater than me but also my education in the European society tells me that a lot of change happens through educating yourself and getting within the society and playing by its rules, and that you can also not sell out. I believe that there should be both.

Q: Right, the spiritual and the material.

Z: Right.

Q: And are there talks and intentions going on to break down the political strife between tribes?

Z: I for one really grew up with a great background growing up having a Japanese brother and Caucasian parents. I found that I truly am not completely color blind but I treat people in a color blind way. Such as Black Native Americans - that’s been a harsh issue in the Native American community and I think it’s turning for the better.

Black Native Americans are getting a lot of recognition, as I see it. It still isn’t right. It’s one oppressed person jumping on another oppressed person.

Q: Crabs in a barrel!

Z: Crabs in a bucket! I do see a change. There is a huge problem between full bloods and half bloods that’s created by the government. The government issues us numbers and quotas on what percentage you can have to be a considered on their rolls. I happen to be a full blood, but I don’t see that as any better than a half blood. If you walk the walk - that’s the way I view people, I don’t view them by percentages.

I do know that there is a very harsh reality to that, and I hope it’s healing. I think it is. As far as tribal - there’s more nepotism in the Native American community than tribal issues. We had it in the Bay Area where one family pretty much runs 80% of all the agencies, and they believe that their intentions are good, but they feel that their family needs to control everything.

It’s something that scares me, even if the family is so virtuous. When you have just one family and there’s no real question whether they can decide Native American issues over a dinner table without people being able to question it that scares me. So nepotism scares me a lot more than inter-tribalism. There must be people out there who don’t like Sioux or don’t like Navajo, or Blackfoot or whatever, but I don’t really see it as a major issue.

Q: Are there any issues within the Native community that are primary that you want to deal with in of the relocation or are there any predecessors that could help you to make those kinds of changes? Are there precursors that have to happen, like mobilizing resources or unifying efforts?

Z: I think the wheels are in motion, and there is a trend of our needing to bind together recognizing that through being urbanized is in a way the best thing for us because it did not separate or divide us. The government is starting to bring us together, and hopefully this will pour between the reservations and the urban cities so we can help each other.

I believe that it is happening now and that people are starting to realize that we need each other to help each other. I found very strong for my bringing up termination and relocation. In fact people feel very encouraged that somebody’s finally talking about a wound that has been plaguing the Native Americans for 40 years now that nobody, including the Native Americans, has talked about.

Part of the pain is that they don’t want to recognize what is really hurting them because It becomes too enormous; it becomes overwhelming that the U.S. government created genocide against us. So I’ve got great encouragement in my task to expose it, and even a lot of pride because it shows incredible survival by families in the Bay Area and other areas who are very proud of what they did and they should be proud.

They held us together and they created an infrastructure that we have today that we didn’t have in 1969 when then all happened. We have health centers, we’re trying to have a charter school that’s in the second year of its running. With an infrastructure, we can be more powerful; we can get the word out. That relates as far as other races are concerned.

We can not only help ourselves, we can help with environmental issues, nuclear waste, and look at other issues that are not just Native American issues. That is going on today. There are spiritual leaders going around and helping.

One of the spiritual leaders stated, “It’s not a Native American issue, it’s a global issue, because what’s going on there is pollution. It spreads acid rain throughout the Southeast into our Eastern coast cities - it rains on Boston.

So there’s more of looking at it as a global issue. And I think Native Americans are at the forefront in saying that this is also going to poison your Caucasian children, your African American children - that it’s our problem, not just a Native American problem.

Q: Thank you, Zachary!

CHAPTER 11

EDGAR SUDRABINS

Healer - Latvia

Edgar was reluctant to have his picture displayed due to the sensitive if not dangerous nature of the relationship to shaman, healers, and psychics in his homeland.

Q: Please tell us a little about your background and spiritual tradition.

E: My name is Edgars Sudrabins, I was born in Latvia, Baltic state in Europe, strong with its traditions of similar to paganism and Wicca, coexisting with orthodox religions and mainstream ideology and philosophy …my ancestors were successful farmers in heartland of Latvia.

Latvia is recognized with its strong pagan-related national tradition - authentic traditional chorus singing of Celtic-like chanting songs and anthems was guarding Latvian national Spirit and identity, suppressed by rule of Communist Party in the time of Soviets and eventually brought Latvia back to liberation and sovereignty in 1990, as it is portrayed in documentary “Singing Revolution”.

Q: What was the relationship of your spiritual traditions to the culture at

large?

E: Traditions of sacred singing and ritualistic manipulation of the environment lays in basic principles of well known phenomena performed by amazing Latvian architect and builder Edward Leedskalnin - the way he defeated gravity while building his famous Coral Castle.

Old Lady-Witch, named Black Martha of Latvia could not be arrested and taken away from her home to custody - Secret Service vehicle simply would not start the engine, when she was in it.

Teleportation to ten miles away performed on country side every morning by the father of my friend, in order to get to his job on time was kept as family secret, unrevealed until he itted it before he ed away. Knowledge of medicinal herbs and healing arts, communication with snakes, trees, dead spirits etc. was also kept as family tradition by few practitioners of Wicca-like mindset and belief system.

Every year all night through June 24th to 25th Latvian river banks and lake sides are lit by thousands of traditional bonfires, where families, neighbors and friends would be sitting around, drinking homemade beer with caraway seed cheese and chanting ritualistic songs, devoted to Summer Solstice celebration and The Day of Yahni - Holy John and worshiping gods and goddesses similar to ones of Celtic and Greek…

Q: Did you have teachers or initiations of some kind that opened the gift of healing that you now possess and share with your clients or your community?

E: It was back in time of Soviet Union, when I encountered married couple, who became my teachers of Raja yoga for next 4 years…my devotion was nothing more than humble presence and absorption of knowledge and skill, related to healing techniques, similar to teachings of Barbara Brennan. Because of specifics of that time - all my studies were tuition free, apprenticeship-like and not money/business oriented.

Needless to say that such practice was generally strictly forbidden and illegal according to ideology of Soviet regime…we all could end up in mental institution without trace and could receive forceful treatment with lobotomy-like effect. But clairvoyance was part of my teacher’s ability and it helped us numerous times to avoid such destiny.

Without any ment I did engage in practice little by little and eventually attended a workshop of famous lady-healer, named Djuna, who is The President of Nontraditional Medicine of the World with titles expending to 2 full pages of the book and I managed to get International Diploma of touch-less healing from her.

I was not the only one, familiar with such techniques in Latvia, there were others as well - some of them I met and we became friends, some of them I only heard about. In the past people of such skill and knowledge would be definitely accused in witchcraft and heresy and burned in fire by Inquisition, so-called auto-da-fe.

Now days many are apprehended by authority, commonly known as man in black, with set of offers you can’t refuse ‘or else’. As a relevant example - look what is happening with tens of thousands of practitioners of spiritual liberating exercise system, called Falun Gong in contemporary China.

I am sure there are many secretive traditions - Shamanic and Magic - around the world, rooting way back into Ancient true History of Inhabitants of planet Earth and Cosmological relations. Such knowledge comes with great power, yet even greater karmic responsibility.

Q: Yes, it does seem like those who are born or taught into these traditions or perspectives do feel the responsibility for the whole, realizing that they are not separate from it. At this point in time with the dangers facing the environment and its toxicity, what do you see as the best, most immediate solution?

E: To give people the land back - unconditionally - so they would homestead, farm and produce their own crops and educate them in organic agriculture and in self-sufficient country-style skills of living. Also, repel and condemn imminent domain laws as anti-human and genocidal.

Chapter 12

Bonita Sizemore

Choctaw, Porch Creek Band, Miccosukee, Montauk, Irish

(One of the founders of the Black Native American Association)

We Are All But One Child Spinning Thru Mother Sky

- Shawnee Proverb

“It’s time to re-establish the old traditions that speak to the new generations that can help inform the new ways that the culture will develop so we can survive.”

“I’m one of those who hear the ancestors, hear the cosmos, keeping quiet to hear that still small voice, and see the visions and connect with others from that place bringing in the messages we need to hear. We need to be more responsible to our own DNA. We know what it is but we live in a culture that doesn’t honor it.”

We have to do that in spite of no - to thine own self be true. We’re placed here as a representative of the cosmos and we have to not get so inundated with worldly business that prevent us from being a reflection of that. We have to honor those who are our mentors and our foremothers. Where is Black literature, women’s literature - those things that would inform others culturally and nationally. The struggle continues.

… Spirit Winds …

… Sway Prayer Pines …

… Petition Cloud Ancestors …

… Gracefully … Cradling Our Universe …

… Blessing Us All …

… Embodying A Special Culture …

… They Bring Forth Ancestral Wisdoms ’ …

… Charged ’ With A Lived Knowledge …

… ing Preservations Of …

… New Wisdoms and Creations Thru …

… The Seventh Generations …

… Under Today’s Eclipse of … The Sun …

… It Reminds Us All …

… We Are But A Reflection …

… Of Every Thing … Between …

… The Sun … The Ocean …

… The Sky … The Earth …

… And … The Moon …

… Our Fire Light …

… Is The Circle ‘Round The Sun And The Moon …

… As Worlds of … Vistas Emerge …

… Perspectives … Sharpen …

… Sacred … Red Tailed Hawk …

… Messenger… Of The Galaxies!!! …

… Scan The Universe …

… Float … Across The Milky Way …

… Glide … The Trade Winds of The Earth …

… Plunge The Depths Of … Blue Green Oceans …

… Red Tailed Hawks … Soar … Dive … Glide …

… Reflected Hues … of… Rain-Bowed Butterflies …

… Upon … Clear Cooled … Life Waters …

… Delicately Flittering …

… Upon The Breath of Our Creators …

… Nourishing All Earth Beings …

… Hanging Up The Sky… Mother’s Of Pearls…

… 7 Sister’s … Gathering Falling Stars…

… Dancing From The MotherLand…

… Mother’s Of The Sky… Shower Blessings…

… 7th Generations !!! … Sing Ancestors’ Praises !!! … The Universe Rejoices !!! .

Chapter 13

Erick Gonzales – AJ Q’IJ

Mayan Shaman / Priest / Medicine Person

Q: I want to help people to be aware of those among us who walk in the way of being on this planet that is an expression of balance and honoring, especially if there are activities going on where if they want to jump in and participate, they can. If they want to reclaim that way of being or that part of their nature to even embrace a culture that feels a little bit foreign - but my sense of it is that it isn’t as foreign as it may seem.

It’s just because of that divisive way of being that it looks that way, but in the heart, most people really resonate with a similar thing, and if it’s ed; if there’s some way of evoking or invoking that memory, that people will find a way to include it again.

E: I agree with that.

Q: I hope, in some way, in writing this, and making the information available, that this may be accomplished. So you are with the Mayan tradition?

E: Yes.

Q: And you were brought up around this area, or?

E: No, I was brought up in Guatemala. I lived with my grandmother a lot because I had polio when I was two, and she used to take me to Mayan healers and orthopedic surgeons, and anybody else who could help. So a lot of those traditions stayed with me, some of the ceremonies that were healing me in my process of trying to walk, and stay out of being paralyzed

completely.

And I lived with her and continued to go visit the healers in Guatemala until about 1971 when I came to the United States, when I was eleven.

Q: And did you study anything in particular, or you got drawn right away into the healing path?

E: We came to L.A., to a kind of poor area. I always had this urge, this calling towards the mountains. My grandmother always talked to me about things - stories and legends. And I always thought, “How am I going to get out of that situation I was in?” You know, bad parts of the city in L.A. So eventually I made it up to the mountains in Humbolt County, and there I met up with some brothers and sisters, some Native Americans up there.

And we started doing sweats, and healings, and learning, and then in the spring of 1978 was when I met Tlakaelel and Four Arrows. We were struggling with the fishing rights for the Klamath area, for the Hoopas and the Yuroks. I was already involved in a lot of Native struggles here and when they came with Four Arrows I met some of my own people - Mayan people.

Q: Who is Four Arrows?

E: It was an international group of elders that originated from the White Roots of Peace that came out of the New York area with Six Nations of the Iroquois. Some of the Hopi people like Thomas Banyaca used to travel with them, and Coyote, Yurin Lions and others. When I met them Tlakaelel was with them, and some other Mayan elders, and we just hit it off really well.

I started translating for Tlakaelel, and pretty soon I was on the bus leaving. I started traveling with them and went back to Guatemala and started struggling with our people. It wasn’t like nowadays when everybody wants to do something with the religions or the spirituality of the Native people. For us it was a struggle trying to develop cooperation in those years - in the 70’s, early 80’s we were trying to develop an economic base for the Mayan people.

Plus those years also were when the Mayan cosmology was still kept in secret. It wasn’t like, “I’m going to train you now and you’ll be a daykeeper twenty years from now.”

It was nothing like that, it was, “We got a job to do. We gotta do this!”

And along the way we did our ceremonies. We learned, and in ’78 the elders gave me objects that I didn’t realize were for the work that I’m doing now. Like in the ceremonies, we use a head cover, and also a sash. It symbolizes that you’re a AJ Q’IJ, a daykeeper, or a Mayan priest.

Q: I never knew how to pronounce that word!

E: AJ Q’IJ. (Sounding like, “Ock Keerk”)

Q: AJ Q’IJ? (I got it!)

E: The “AJ” is like a staff, like sugar cane, or the stalk of the corn; and

“Q’IJ” is the sun. So there’s this plant, this cane that is trying to reach the sun, trying to reach the light while you maintain integrity, strength, endurance, and always growing towards that light. Also AJ Q’IJ is the one who always maintains the faith of the Mayan people. They’re the shamans or the shaman-priests.

We do multiple duties so to speak of the priests, are things that a shaman would do. If we look at today’s world, how they define shaman is that it comes from Siberia. So we that kind of work, but we also do the priest kind of work.

Q: If you were just like the Siberian shaman - your definition or description what would that be?

E: It would be somebody who could commune with the spirits; who can lead ceremonies; who can heal, and travel into spiritual worlds and retrieve either spirit souls, or part of the psychic of the person that has been lost somewhere along the inter-twining of the different dimensions of this universe.

An AJ Q’IJ for us is one who becomes fire, becomes water, the wind the earth; one who uses the elements a whole lot to do his healing and to do ceremonies. It’s also one who maintains the balance in the world through ceremony. They use the medicines; collect them, then ister them to other people.

It’s also one who leads the songs of the ceremonies - that’s pretty much an AJ Q’IJ. It’s an integrating being that continues to process integration with the cosmos, with the universe, all the spiritual worlds that are constantly throughout the universe, but it’s also throughout ourselves, so it’s one who studies and teaches. That’s pretty much what we do.

Q: That’s huge!

E: It takes a lot of years to train somebody and you have to have a special gift. We look at the Mayan calendar so to speak as a guiding tool to see what the moment of your birth, the moment of your conception, the moment of your first completion of your first cycle, which is 260 days, and what forces what spiritual forces were coming to you at that time. It becomes a kind of astrological reading.

In essence, it’s a scientific knowledge that unlocks the spiritual realm. In understanding the mechanics of the universe we understand how we as human beings are part of that universe and can act in it, or on what responsibility the universe has towards us. This is where the healing comes in. There’s enough energy there, enough knowledge that the healing can happen, and that’s what the AJ Q’IJ does.

The gifts are given to us; there’s always a knowledge that the creator is always working through us; all the spirits are working through us. We usually don’t consider that we own anything, or that we are doing the work, but that we create the state, so-to-speak, and the body so that the healing spirits can work through us; the creator can work through us. And those gifts are something to always honor.

For our people, if we don’t fulfill the mission that we decided to come and do, then sickness comes, or nothing really works; your marriage, your friends, your vocation doesn’t really flower, doesn’t really flower to the point that you’re happy with it. You’re always unsatisfied until you’ve served your gift. And then the other thing that we look at is if you have the extra lightning. In the body we know there’s an electrical circuit.

To the AJ Q’IJ, the shaman, the priest, an extra gift is given to them to do their work. It serves as an indicator or as a communicator that speaks through the blood. It’s vibrations that we receive. We talk or we do the healings, we meditate, we ask for questions, we wait for messages - this communication from the spirit world - what we call the nahuales. The symbols that are used for the Mayan calendar, so to speak, but each one is a universe, it’s a world, it’s an entity that works in part of the body, and also marks the days.

It’s like today: ‘AJ’. Today is an ‘AJ’ day. So we will know ‘AJ’, that today this vibration is spirit dominating or ruling today as the day lord and it depends on where the vibration happens in your body as we do the healing, we get the communication back. So we can understand what the sickness is, or how to heal it, or how to interpret the question or when we’re doing the divination, how to interpret what the message from the spirit world is. So that’s kind of what the AJ Q’IJ helps.

And the elders look at all this and the cost of the trials to challenge you, to test you all the way to see if you’re worth receiving the initiation to become an AJ Q’IJ. Because you’re a servant of the people, and there’s a responsibility there that we accept towards our own people because we must maintain the faith of the Mayan people.

Q: By ‘faith’ - which way are you using that word?

E: The cosmology of the Mayan people; the knowledge that hasn’t been broken for thousands and thousands of years.

Some people will say that, “The Mayans are all gone and they just left ruins!”

But it’s not true. We’re still here, and we still practice the same knowledge that was left in the murals, on the stellas, in the temples, or in the books.

Q: And the stellas are…?

E: The stellas are like a big rock that is carved with information on it usually initiation dates or some event that they had of great importance to our people. A lot of the language was written in stone, or books, wood or ceramic, through paintings. We had a written language that is still really vivid in the temples. As people learn more about it, they’re understanding more about how our people used to write.

The old way of writing is lost; we don’t use it anymore, but the main knowledge of healing, of understanding the cosmos and the timekeeping is still there.

Q: So by interpreting what you as a shaman would understand as the order of the universe, or whatever the forces or influences that are impacting a particular person, do you then, with the guidance you receive guide them according to what is the most auspicious time for a certain thing to happen? Would it help that person determine what is right for them as a work - is each person kind of cut out according to their purpose, as you said? Would that be part of your healing session to determine all that?

E: Right. First, it’s like finding out who the person is, what kind of vibrations we feel, what we see in of their aura or their intentions, their feelings that are coming out, and the date of their birth. From there we know a genetic code - the DNA. Our calendar, so-to- speak, or knowledge won’t tell you just on the level of scientific observations; its’ astronomical,

it’s astrological, it’s scientific, it’s mathematics, and it’s spiritual.

It’s like a mirror image of this world into the next, and the key is that what our people are able to find out for them is like the golden rule, or the golden mean. Our knowledge becomes a key of understanding how the universe works. And therefore we understand how it works on us, and in using that we can guide other people to their better path, or better road, or how to heal the sickness that they have.

In a different case, we can help someone to be able to find a good companion, create a good companionship or a good relationship. There are some people for whom no matter how much you try they won’t cooperate with each other. That’s because there are too many gaps, or too much energy, like magnets that don’t touch.

So no matter how much you try, it won’t be a successful marriage, or successful relationship. Why? Because the body is a representation of the micro-cosmos and the Great Cosmos. As above, so below and vice versa, so in the physical is a reflection of the spiritual. We all have a shadow; we cannot separate from our shadow, so that too is our body.

Q: In Mayan , what is our ‘shadow’?

E: The shadow is the other side of ourselves.

Q: The other side?

E: The other side of ourselves. So physically we see it’s a reflection of light hitting us and creating a shadow, but in the spiritual we also have a shadow that’s living its own kind of entity there. And this is where the shamans can go back into both worlds, either through using medicine or fasting, or meditation or dancing or ceremony to go back into and see your shadow. We all have our own demons, our own little corridors, the secret places that are safe.

We, through medicine and ceremonies, can enter those worlds and find out, “How come this problem, or what’s going on with this or that?” So then we can heal that in that world, and bring it back in this world.

Q: You heal it in a different dimension?

E: Right, but we can also heal in this dimension because they’re not separate.

Q: Sure!

E: They’re the same, like a vibration when you hear my voice, it’s creating a little ring and this (creates a little whirling sound) ‘til it hits your ear and then you process it in the physiology of your brain and your ear, and spiritually, the vibration also is creating an aspect in ourselves - how we feel, how we perceive things.

Sometimes we don’t know, “What happened with this feeling?”

There’s something else going on sometimes beyond our capability to understand. So if the shamans, the healers can go in and understand a little more, and they use that as a tool to help, the guide, the share, to extract things.

Q: They’re kind of interwoven, it seems - the role of a shaman, a priest, and a daykeeper, and a healer. Are they all the same really, or?

E: Yes. One AJ Q’IJ can have many gifts to use. When it becomes more specialized is dictated by the day you were born. Let’s say a priest was born in Q’anil is like the four colors of the corn. It’s the rabbit, the fertility. That priest or that priestess will have that special gift. Let’s say somebody else was born on the B’atz - another daylord. Both are priests or shamans, but one is good for blessing in the seeds.

Q: What is B’atz? (it has a ‘little dot on top’ of the B)

E: B’atz is the monkey; another daylord. The B’atz priest is good for marrying people, for divining if the couple would be a good marriage or not, or fixing problems within people; they have a different role than the Q’anil, or say the Kiej (‘j’ sounds like ‘k’) person. Kiej is the deer, and they are really strong.

They have a lot of power - the Kiej - to deal with, because they sustain the four dimensions - the four pillars of the universe. They’re using the four energies of the universe to do the healing, to do their work.

Q: Sorry to interrupt you, but I’m never going to know how to spell things words! (Erick is kind enough to spell all the different types of daylords

mentioned so far, as we laugh about the ‘little dot’ he mentioned being an apostrophe)

E: They use translation. Like we can say Kiej is deer, he is the deer lord, or Q’anil is the corn lord or the seed lord. B’atz is the monkey lord. They all have representations in some sort of physical entity, but they have many facets, and faces, in the spiritual. For example we say B’atz is a monkey, but it’s also a thread that binds the generations together. So through B’atz we can go back and look at your lineage and we follow it through like that.

And all this has been made open by the elders request that certain people be trained as bridges, like me. I’m a half breed - mixed blood - in all there are very few non-pure Mayans, so-to-speak who have received the training, the bundles to be an AJ Q’IJ JAB (pr. Hub), a Mayan priest - a daylord.

There have been some outsiders who’ve been given that, but they believe and we believe now that we are in a purification period. The earth and all living things are going through a change already - it started a while back. And as it speeds up, the necessity to awaken, like you said, your work - trying to bring some of this knowledge that has been kept with the indigenous people into the popular movement, or into the mainstream to try to make some changes, means more lives can be saved.

And then the people will be prepared to face great trials or challenges. Each of us, when we teach, when we do the ceremonies we bring the tools to the people to empower themselves so that they will be strong warriors or warrioresses so that more people will be able to make the transition in a good way as things will be starting to polarize more and more.

We all are given the choice to walk one way or walk the other, and as we get

closer to the time of transition, the polarization will get stronger and stronger. So more people will be happier and singing and dancing, and more spiritually aware, and their bodies will be transforming into different things. Whereas the other will be more sickness, more starvation, more war, dissolution, more negative things like that, more painful things.

So some of the work we do the last three or four years among Native nations the faith keepers - their elders, spiritual elders having gathered in many different parts of this continent to talk about the prophecies, to talk about the conditions of the people, to try and find solutions to present to the governments and corporations of the world.

They can consider options about how they’re using the natural resources or the Third World people. So we are really concerned that as we approach more this prophesized time, more people want to cut the last tree that is still standing, or mine the last mine, or take the last fish. That’s the polarization we’re talking about. As we hurry to save it, others will hurry to destroy it.

Q: I was hoping that being involved in activities which help to make the individual more whole would enable the whole world to be recognized as whole. Then polarizing decisions, or choices that will be against one part of life will be felt as also being against themselves and against other parts of life. I was hoping that this could change the place that decisions come from.

That seems to be happening more and more, at least in certain areas - I’m not sure how widespread it is, but I began to get the feeling recently that there isn’t as much time for each individual to have this kind of transformative vision of how everything works together. So I’m glad to hear you say that many are working and speaking with others on these things.

I’m wondering if there is something in the prophecies that speaks about how things do have to be this way; that things have to divide and fall apart - if that in fact is part of the natural order of things. That they grow, they create, then they destroy and fall apart and something else comes together and something new is born.

E: When we look at natural cycles; cycles of the day cycles of 20 days, cycles of years, cycles of eras, cycles of beyond that - of worlds, we’ve already been given the genetic code of being able to reproduce ourselves to the point of almost over-populating the earth (experienced) as the urge to feel the need to survive.

So there’s been this constant feeling already in the information being given by the earth, the sun and other astronomical bodies, also from the spirit world, the encoding been given to us to try to survive, just like the mantis.

Q: Praying Mantis?

E: Yeah, praying mantis, they go and eat all the wheat, or these big clouds of locust. The same thing happens with them - that they get a certain genetic encoding some years ahead - they go in a cycle, so it’s already encoded that this time they have to reproduce because there’ll be a shortage of food or some kind of hard weather or something where they won’t have a good environment to live, so they reproduce like crazy. It doesn’t happen every year; it may be 11 years, or whatever their cycle is.

We the same thing in our sacred book, called Popul Vuh, and also other remains of what they left us, like what they call the Aztec calendar. In there is the story of how the world has been destroyed; how our people that the whole world has been destroyed 4 times. We are living in the 5th sun.

They give us the exact date of when the 5th sun ends, which was December 21, 2012. It was written hundreds and hundreds of years ago when the Mayans wrote in the stella, the beginning date of the cycle, and the ending. So when we talk about purification, something must give.

When you’re sick, you have to fight back your sickness, and get rid of the parts that are sick. You have to take medicines, you have to have your arm amputated or whatever the process for healing is, you have to go through. What we know is that many of us have been sent here to reawaken the spiritual people, and to try to do the healing.

As we work, more and more people learn about their gifts. There are many healers now doing the work that we’re doing, trying to help people, trying to awaken; a lot of unity, a lot of caring and loving; a lot of hard work.

There’s something in us that doesn’t leave us alone, that encourages us to keep these kind of way of life - not just, “Keep this house and have fun” all the time.

Something else is talking to us, saying, “Change your life; make the changes you need to be a whole person again, a more harmonious person; one that would look at this and see it happening all over the place - people working together and developing communities.”

We see this happening all over the place - sharing land, or thinking about how they’re going to buy the land so they can create a community- a healing community where there’s community gardens, and community-based economy. That is going be a good way for people to use to survive. To look at the ecosystem and say, “Where is the weak, where is the strong? Learn about your

neighbors - who can work together, who can’t? Try and find ways to each other because there will be a great need.

That’s what we taught in the prophecies in listening to the elders is that in unity there’s strength. We start healing with ourselves, the individual. Once we get to the point where we know that we can walk on our own, at least we know where we’re going, then we can talk to a second person, and our families.

First get the families behind your goal, the second is your neighbor, then your community, then your clan, then your nation, then the world.

We see more and more as we go that people are giving up their regular job saying that they want to do healing. There’s no money in healing. It’s not like the Western world of medicine where they charge a lot of money and don’t really heal.

There are many things so we can take both forms of knowledge and make them both honorable and acceptable, so the healers now use herbs, medicines, songs, and touching as alternative methods we honor so there can be some way of making a living so you can feed your family.

When we heal not only the body, but the psychic, the mind, and the spirit, something happens to the person that it seeks to be in that place at all times. So this is what we call a spiritual awakening. Our healing concentrates more on the spiritual awakening than let’s say, an achy elbow. There’s something trying to remind the person to do certain things; trying to remind you that there’s another reality.

Like in my experience, sickness brought me back into the reality of medicinal ways with people. When I was 2 years old I had polio, then I broke my back, and 7-8 years ago I had to go through the process of healing, finding what I needed the most, then I had a knee surgery. And for some people, coming close to death is what tries to remind you there’s a different reality.

Even in the year after my surgery on the back, I decided not to take any pain medication, and how do you deal with such a tremendous pain and heal yourself? That brings you an awareness of this other reality, that you do face death, that there’s a light out there that’s touchable, tasteable, it’s integrative.

When we become aware of that, it’s what we call AQ IJ JAB. Then you bring it back and say, “Hey look, we’ve seen this - this is another way we can do things.” It’s already in their system so it’s more absorbed than someone else in the society who starts to see things, or things happen, or gets trapped in one of those other realities - we call them schizophrenic or crazy.

A lot of them have been stuck in those worlds, or they deny the society’s negative aspects. They felt more comfortable in that place. For our people there’d be a different way of healing them than just medication and putting them away.

Q: Yes, that’s part of what I see as a problem with the fragmentation and not seeing the continuity between all the different dimensions in life and people then kind of unconsciously do things to force open a door for themselves, if not into another specific realm, out of the limited one that they’ve been conditioned into and feel so trapped by.

There’s so much substance abuse or use to try and reach the dreamtime or at least some type of altered state where people can pull in some kind of

information and healing, or creativity from those spaces that they can’t normally access. That’s a way that I felt would also be useful if it were languaged and accepted in a way that most indigenous people already embrace and know is a part of life and know this is not something illegal; this is not something to repress in people!

E: Right!

Q; It’s necessary!

R: Right! Yes. We also believe the same thing that the medicines have to be used under strict guidance of a cultural base, a cosmology. Like in Columbia and Peru - they call them Titus - and the Titus have years and years of training in using the medicines where they can bring someone into those worlds, then guide them through. Guide them in heal them, and then bring them back out in a healed way.

When a lot of the people bring the medicines from there, or start using them without proper guidance or they like you say, get into this world on a crash course.

Q: Then the shadow can overtake you in ways you don’t know how to control, and the medicines aren’t whole themselves and pure, so it can have harmful effects on the body.

E: Right, Something has to bring you back; something has to keep you in rhythm. There has to be a focus of the medicines. That’s why the peyote ceremonies are very strict, the way of following things. The ayahuasca

ceremony is the same thing with the cactus; the Mazatecs with their mushrooms and other medicines…. it’s important to keep the cultural bases pure to base, and this is where some of the teachings are coming from.

The thing is still, with the transition, we find that Native and non-Native people find that there is money to be gained giving the journeys. There’s a greater damage being done than we have seen. You know it’s not to take corn, or ayahuasca, or jahe and just leave them. Things happen in that ceremony; things that you question, things that you saw; things that made an impact on you. Now who’s going to answer those questions?

Who’s going to that you saw something if there’s no follow-up, you see? And this is where there’s more damage being done. Plus the pushing of the issue that some of these are becoming illegal drugs. Some people who are not from a cultural base using them and then getting into trouble. And then the abuse starts, and then it becomes illegal for the Native people who’ve been using it for thousands of years.

You know it’s a delicate thing, but I think with more elders and people that are being trained by elders or aboriginal people are coming now. The doors in many places are still open for many to come and share in a good way with a respectful way.

I’ve also seen it both ways like in the elders’ councils, is one example is one Nation where the older elders decided to leave because non-Native people were there and they had bad experiences with their sundances or with their sweat lodges.

Again, I think it’s important for unity to happen; I think it’s important for those who are gifted, or have learned some things to share or teach as much as they

can so things can continue to progress in a good way.

What we’re trying to do now in the United States is to create kanpurs or counsels of people who’d work with some of the daykeepers, or some of the shamans, under the great counsels of the Mayan people. They have their goals and objectives, and one is to share the knowledge to help heal, to bring unity to strengthen the people; to try and save and many lives as possible.

The responsibility we’re asking is that the other people will also feel that in their hearts that’s important, as we share and open the doors to the ceremonies that the rest of the people will honor those elders too, and the process that they’re sending the Mayans through. There are plenty of wars going around with the Mayan people and society, like the war in Chiapas and Guatemala going through the peace process.

Even though it’s political, and also even though they’re in a destructive and negative way, we have to look at that there was no other option for them; that was their survival. And that they share with us, we should be able to share and help them out. There’s a reason why they’re being attacked in the way that they are.

There’s fighting and struggling in the physical, the same thing is happening in the spiritual, and we are the tools in our time, in our shape and form, in our movement, in our vibrations the same thing’s happening; this continuous yin/yang kind of thing.

Q: Yeah, all these opposing forces. I felt that anyone who could reconcile those opposing forces within themselves could also send a message through the ‘web’ or collective that also gives information on how to negotiate those differences that we all hold.

It makes it easier for anyone else who wants to do it. But I also feel that there are some who are not tuned in to receive information that way, and that as with your council of elders who are going around speaking to people, there needs to be more direct communication with people.

And you mentioned something earlier that I think is very important, as a pillar for all communities, and that is respect. To have a way of meeting and greeting those differences because that’s really the bottom line of what we’re talking about: how to honor them, how to acknowledge and honor them that they don’t need to be conflicting to the point of domination.

I wonder, ideally within the Mayan tradition that you’re familiar with, what is the benevolent way of governing; what is the respectful way?

E: You walk slowly, you’re always alert, and if you love something, if you love and respect yourself, you will know to feed yourself well, you will feel to warm yourself against the cold, you will cover yourself when it’s raining. The same thing when we approach another person. We acknowledge that they have feelings, that they also have experiences, and that as we come close to each other there are boundaries to be respected, there are needs to be fulfilled, there are words to be shared.

The respect then becomes a natural thing that you always have. If you believe that in every living thing, the Creator lives in it, even the tape recorder. It’s a manifestation of the Creator wanting to experience something at that time in that shape in that form.

LEADERSHIP AND HONOR

Then, when we approach that, we’re not going to just grab it, throw it on the floor and step on it for no reason. We honor that it cost natural things to make it, probably contaminated the air, and so on. So that even such a simple thing as a tape recorder, we have to respect it; we have to take care of it.

One thing, is financially, we can’t be buying one every day; secondly maybe you won’t be able to find as good one, or one that you liked. When we approach somebody’s house, in a way of respecting the elders we never go visit them with empty hands. Never. We bring some tobacco, or some food, or some donation or some flowers for the family.

A couple knocks and you wait, you wait, you wait. Maybe you’re disturbing something. You’re coming into an environment where you don’t know what’s on the other side of the door. That’s how we also approach our shrines and our temples, our medicines and our ceremonies. Walk slow, very alert, so we don’t just go into a group where there’s a group of people who may be in the middle of prayer. You don’t just go and say, “Hey, how you guys doin’?”

You walk slowly and see what’s the process, what’s happening. You’re not in a hurry, you don’t want to create something you might be sorry for later. You go in without anxiety; anxious to see, anxious to grab, anxious to know. You don’t go in like that. You don’t try to hurry the process. Healing takes the whole life.

A lot of people want to hurry up and get the answers right now and then go. That doesn’t work with finding that mutual respect with people. I think that another thing we try to do is get rid of expectations. Things happen on the road, wrong directions or something and one hour later it’s okay. There’s no need to speak in a way that will create a negative feeling toward each other.

Things that happen in life, just accept it. We try to correct what we can, and then if we can’t then we try to learn how to fix it, or stay away from it. Know when you can fix something, or when it’s time to back off and accept that, “I can’t do this,” and be happy with that. Accept it willingly.

Some of our circles we have a lot of people turn up from different faiths, or they follow different religions, or different beliefs, or when they get together, some people may walk around the circle clockwise around the fire, and others counterclockwise. Others go from East to West instead of clockwise or counterclockwise, they go and make the cross, like the zenith in the sky - that’s what the Mayans do.

They follow the path of the sun. The sun doesn’t go from here, straight to the North, it doesn’t do that. So the Maya believe the path of light goes from East to West and the wind is born from the North, and that’s the same thing. This is where they cross the zenith in the middle of the sky - it makes the Mayan cross.

So in the ceremonies, everybody respects each way. If they want to pray with a pipe, they’re totally respected. Usually people want to share with each other; to share medicine. Like Columbian people share coca leaves or the ayahuasca or something, and there was never any, “Oh, that’s not my way; that’s wrong!” There was never even a thought of it. No wars, no bad feelings because these guys are wearing long hair, and these are wearing short hair.

I think that once you become spiritually aware of the sacredness of life; the sacredness of the air, of the water, the sacredness of our fire; how precious they are when we don’t have them! The warm breath that gives you life is so beautiful! Or if you go thirsty for a long time, you know how precious water is. So you try to take care of it.

Or how precious the earth is; all the different manifestations, shapes and forms of the Creator are there, and you begin to respect that. What is my mission or my responsibility to the will of life, and also what is the responsibility of the will of life to me? We’re receiving the air, the water - from the rain - it’s fulfilling its responsibility to us. The rain, the water, the cycles to wash us, to heal us - we have our sweat lodges, we use the water; it’s fulfilling its mission to us, now how are we going to repay that?

RESPONSIBILITY AND THE FULFILLMENT OF ONE’S MISSION

Q: So that cycle, and that circle is another one of those ways of being that’s interconnected and whole. I wonder if that’s what you’re speaking about sometimes when you go to businesses and speak about the resources being so depleted. That initiates that kind of questioning, “What is my responsibility to these creatures; to this copper and gold, and to these fish?

E: Right. We do have a responsibility. Spiritually, also we have a responsibility to the Creator. In our stories they teach us the morals about what our responsibility is in our sacred book - buj - is our sacred book. In that, they’re telling us the story about the twins, as our duality and what they go through to overtake or survive the challenges of Xibalba the Underworld.

The Lords of Xibalba: the Lords of Death, the Lords of sickness and treachery all the negative things - and what can we do, how can we be smarter than the lords of the Underworld and become enlightened beings. That’s our goal to learn those things and our responsibility is to acknowledge them and to give honor to them.

Q: What do the Lords of the Underworld want?

E: They want our sickness, they want our bones broken, they want our blood, they want destruction, they want the dark side ourselves, and they want to feed on us. Because as we offer that to them - we have things attached to our spirit - and they’re like leeches feeding on different levels of our souls and our psychic, our bodies and our minds, our spirits everything.

As we think hatred, revenge and things, just think of the lord of the underworld feeding upon your heart and twisting it, destroying it, turning you into this ugly, stinky thing. And that’s what we become, you know, we create this order of ugliness, we create this unbalanced sickness and we become spiritually dead. That’s what we fear. We don’t care anymore or we don’t take care of ourselves.

We step on little animals in front of us or on other human beings or we steal, and we stop caring about each other or we don’t help another being in distress. We walk along a San Francisco street and there can be people begging or dying; they’re there because they have no home and we have no feelings toward them. We’re becoming spiritually dead when we don’t care about others.

Living in this society in great comfort, but we don’t care about the air anymore, or we don’t care if all the chemicals go into the Bay, and it totally destroys every fish there, then we have become spiritually dead. So what can we do? We can awaken the people; heal them, show them. Our initiations are very experiential.

You experience being thirsty, you experience being cold, you experience being hot, and you appreciate that the tree is going to shade you at the end of that day when you finish dancing - or the pain in being tied to the sundance pole. You appreciate your people, you appreciate your family, you honor them, you want to be alive and give something back. Through that process you can help others.

That’s what others have been doing and that’s what we do now. We say, “Hey, we’re still alive, we still have a chance!”

The Hopi have been saying that for a long time, and I think they have knocked on the door of the United Nations for a long time and they didn’t answer. They received them the last time, but there was nobody there to listen.

So the last time I heard, they were just backing down and staying home more. Nobody listened. I think it will become more apparent as this purification goes deeper and deeper into more people learning that the frequency of the Earth in increasing; that the magnetism is decreasing; that the rotation might change, that the angle’s already changing, and once it stops and once it does major things it will create major changes upon the ecosystems of the world.

And we’ve started seeing that already. I guess it will take more destruction, I guess more wars, more threat to life for more people to awaken. And that’s the purification.

Q: It’s like pressure on the coal to make the diamond somehow. I’ve seen it many times in the work that I do: people creating an intense shock for themselves to stop and take another look.

E: It usually happens like that with shamans. They’re just doing their own thing, and “Boom!” They do a training, or have an accident, or a death experience, or some sort of really huge trauma, and something in the psychic changes, then their whole life changes. No longer the ‘having a nice garden’ or living in the village.

The difference between the schizophrenic, which is a sickness and a disease and a shaman, is that they have probably touched the same worlds and have experienced the same kind of trauma, but one has been able to deal with it in their daily lives and also help others go through that process versus the other just got stuck and couldn’t come out of it.

A shaman can easily be willing to stay in another realm where he has found his essence. We find that a lot of shaman are separated from mainstream things. It’s hard to stay within the focus of a lot of mainstream stuff. That’s why they become great teachers, like Jesus Christ or the Buddha, or many others in India, Africa, America, everywhere - become the teachers.

Something happened that altered their reality. There’s always somebody to put the people back in focus within the realms of the realities; multiple realities. To help with the physical things we need to do and with the understanding of the universe; to help answer the questions we all ask:

“Who are we? What are we, where are we going, what am I to do? Is there a God? Is there an essence? What is this?”

A lot of the medicine people have been able to answer those, or at least see them, feel them, and develop the different faiths that we have. Still an interpretation of humanity, but it has guided humans in a good way until we corrupt it. Now again we’re facing this purification. The sun is setting up its position to affect the earth; we’re going to be entering a huge amount of sun spot activity.

SCIENCE, WISDOM, AND THE ANCIENT PROPHECIES

Q: That’s very powerful for the psyche, isn’t it? Isn’t that part of what’s needed for this purification process – some information and preparation?

E: Right. And it’s constant; we’re being bombarded by information more and more, and as time speeds up, we are adjusting to that change. It’s like squeezing the whole world into a glass, and squeezing ourselves with it until it blows up.

Q: Things turn into catch phrases and fads so easily, on the West Coast especially, and then people just push it aside as part of this tinseled, New Age supermarket that they don’t need to regard as valid information. But this is ancient. This information comes from wisdom that’s been around long before this country even was formed.

I wonder if you could share a little bit more about what some of these prophecies are and about how the shaman and the elders gather information? Also, possibly offer some words of wisdom to help people who are used to thinking linearly so we can cross that bridge in helping them understand what’s important?

E: Well for the Mayans - the knowledge we’re using now is scientific knowledge. It encomes a lot of years, a lot of generations of observations of time. It’s the play between light and shadow. We talked about the natural flow of the water - the observation of how things react towards something that’s happening with the sun and the moon - what happens to the tides?

What happens with our bodies? What happens with heat and cold or when different pressures that happen? So a lot of this has been scientific knowledge.

Q: By heat and cold, do you mean the changing of the global temperature global warming?

E: Just experiencing of the extremes. Learning that at extreme cold, and extreme hot, they both feel the same; how is that? So the observation of generations of teaching and learning the use of medicines to go beyond the physical realm, to bring back accurate information, to prove it, to make it a way of life. This is what our people had - a way of life that kept in balance with the world.

Yes, great changes happened in America - great environmental changes that totally collapsed the ecosystem, and the people retreated more to the way of life of the small villages with more understanding of the ecosystems. They kept the tradition, they kept the knowledge and with this knowledge came the understanding that things happen in cycles.

Pretty soon it’s going to be full moon. How are we feeling now, what happens to the tides? So next month it happens again; now we can predict, or maybe we can watch 10 moons and see exactly what happens to the lake or to the ocean. The 11th time, then we can predict because of the full moon at this time is 29 days, the tides will be appearing - and you can confirm it. You put a stick there, and if something moves it differently, you can adjust.

And this is where the Mayans started thinking that things happen in cycles; cycle of the day, then a week , a month, a year, 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, 140 years, and you can go on. There is a huge amount of cycles.

As long as the rhythms come like the galactic waves that come they were able to

detect them and to feel them. They were able to know that the earth was not the center like the Europeans always thought. And the knowledge goes way deeper, but understanding the flow of the planets, what the relationship is between all of them, how that affects us, what is our goal our relationship to all of them, helps us to predict things.

First, the moon phases, then the equinox, then the solstice, then the eclipses they can predict the eclipses, and that’s all scientific, but that’s just on the physical. They never separated themselves from bringing that into the understanding of the spiritual. How does the medicine act at different times of the moon? You don’t just pick the plant at new moon when all the essences are just bringing it out in full. You wait.

See there’s all this knowledge that’s scientifically based. It’s not just that you say, “I’m thinking of an idea…” like a philosopher. We don’t have a philosophy, it’s what you call a cosmology - it’s the understanding of the cosmos and how it relates to us. That was how the predictions were able to be given, plus the oral traditions were really strict: you must repeat this after that, before you can go to the other.

Like when I was talking to you about the day saints. You can’t skip them. You have to know how to repeat them. You have to know that one goes after the other, and it’s a whole sequence of things that go in order, because there’s a general order of the universe. There are laws that rule the universe.

If people again, through scientific means were able to develop the geometry - the pyramids, the way the energies activate, the universal energies in connection with the earth - the magnetic fields, frequencies, sound, thought - all scientifically based with the tools to open them into the spiritual realms.

It’s the way they can predict - they know the change is already there. The ancients said it, they wrote it in stella or in through the oral traditions that the purification is coming. They said that on a specific date, this cycle will end, and renewal will begin - it’s not the end of the world so to speak. There might be great destructions, great challenges, and great transformations, but some light will continue on just as it has up to this point.

We can see that some type of life has already disappeared forever. The dinosaurs, and beyond them there were others, and in between them there were more - the mammoth - all those cycles of life will always manifest something else. My concern is that we care for life and want to survive so that we talk about the 6th sun. They say that, “These 4 suns were destroyed like this because the people did not fulfill their mission.

Now again, we didn’t fulfill our obligation to the Creator or life, so we’ll be altering our ecosystems and the destruction will be more intense. It’ll be harder for the elements.

Q: Is that the 12,000 year cycle Tlakaelel was speaking about?

E: Right, right. All throughout Meso America there’s the same idea about the 12,000 year cycle. We’re at the end of that.

The AJ Q’ IJ study a lot of different sciences. If we go back to our elders, they’re curanderos, they’re healers, they’re astronomers, they’re astrologers, they do divinations, they maintain the calendars, they’re priests, they’re shamans.

And so the one person becomes at his full potential, concentrating on his specific

gifts. As a healer, he can do divinations and things, but maybe his gift is to love more of the plants, so he’ll just do more of that. Sure, he can lead a ceremony, and he probably will lead a ceremony, but his main thing is the herbs, and knowing how to use them, and teach others.

Some will just do the ceremonies and carry the burdens of every person, because in our ceremonies we’re interacting with the elements of life: the fire, the wind, the water, the earth, and the spiritual movements, spiritual entities, and spiritual forces. And to be able to go into maybe a couple thousand people and heal, and let the vibration go out into the fire and then be able to handle all that.

And even so, I’ve seen a lot of elders get sick for weeks after that because it took a lot. A lot of things happen and the body can only take so much. So the second thing is, what to share with the people or how to awaken some of the people who are not willing to look, or to care, or change.

We come there to a place where we have to look in ourselves and know that we can’t help everybody; that not everybody wants our help, and not everyone could care less if you did anything or not. But the ones who do care, those are the ones we concentrate on. Those who come are the ones who cross paths, and the ones who are willing to share, we concentrate on them.

Expose yourself more like this in book or other things; expose them so that more people will look at them and make a choice. Then when you come together, then you can start talking about evolutions, and transformation of yourselves. Those who are really like this; who will see the light and say, “Hey, there’s a big tidal wave coming! There’s a big tidal wave coming!! Will you look? Look!!”

And he says, “I have to get on my computer, I got to make money, I got to sell more stocks,” etc., right?

Then all of a sudden he sees a shadow and he looks out the window and WHOOSH! That’s what we’re saying. Over and over man tries to see how powerful he is. In Japan they tried to build the greatest buildings - earthquake proof. The great technology came from Japan. Well, Mother Earth really humbled them. It hit so hard that every single building that was earthquake proof- boom! - came down. You know?

It really tells us who’s in charge. And it’ll teach us to be humble again, just like it has in the last four destructions. It really tells humanity about their ego, and about their boasting, their lack of caring for each one was destroyed.

And it tells you why and how and then if you look, just in ourselves now, the moral that those people had, or that those stories have, you’d say, “Wow, we pretty much have all of those in this fifth world!” You know the Hopis also said we have the fifth world, the fifth sun - we’re going into the fifth.

THE RETURN TO UNITY

Q: So the Mayans and the Hopi and the Aztec all see the same cycles?

E: Pretty much, yes, each one with a little difference. We believe, and the Hopis say too, that we all came from the central area. The whole continent has a big relationship. I don’t the date right now, but there’s symbol that our elders are using now, is where the condor and the eagle kind of turn heads like this, and they made a shield.

A big stone is in Mexico City, and there are stories about it, that the whole continent was under two confederations. The Southern one, and the Northern one. The Southern one was based in Meso America. The Northern one was based around the Incan people, and they made a pact with the confederations where the condor and the eagle would be together in unity and strength.

It was disrupted because of the invasion of the Europeans but the prophecy said that the condor and eagle would come to be one again, as it was. This is what we’re doing, and the symbol of our elders now is the condor and the eagle, fulfilling the prophecy. And here in the North is another one that came out of Mexico. He said that all our children and all of children of all times, that the dark period will come, the dark ages but that the light will come back again.

In this time it was said to keep everything in their homes; to give it to one father and to the son, and his son and so forth. And the mothers to their daughters and granddaughters and so forth, like that. Then there will be generation of elders who will be the last of their people. They will be the last ones standing.

And you see throughout North America, it’s almost like that – few elders just hanging in together through some stories that they had, and they kept struggling. They are the ones; these are the elders who are bringing the people back to the fire, back to the ceremony, back to the circle. And they did that.

Huge councils happened all over America. Those elders like Grandfather David from Mananga, one of the Hopis, Chief Shenandoah from the Iriquois, Black Elk, and Phillip Deer, and elders like them that brought back the pride in being a Native again in the North. In the South, there was one AJ Q’Ij who had to teach his son in secret, because who knows – the rest of the village might say to the church, “Hey, those are witches!” And they will destroy them.

So it was the same thing down there, where it was hidden. Here it was one elder barely standing on his own. Over there, it was a great Nation, but it was hidden, you know, like camouflage like a lot of the rest of their traditions. Those elders have come up and brought it back to light, brought it back to being Native pride, and Native healing, and fulfilling the prophecies of the condor and the eagle.

They are connecting again, and that one tribe or one nation will keep the songs, the other the calendar, the other one will keep the medicines, and when they come together to do fire, they will teach each other, and that’s what we have seen. Then, the generations following them -those elders - will be the one who takes the world through purification - that’s us.

Like the other ones, there are about 50 or so - they’re the ones who will carry the people through the purification – keeping them with the faith, with the ceremonies, keep teaching, keep talking about unity, and bringing them all back keeping them in a circle and approach more traveling, You still see Tlakaelel travel tirelessly. Thirty years or more; and there’s other ones like that on a slow tour. He just left us a while back. He was from the East Coast Nations, another very important person.

Q: He ed away recently.

E: He’s already left this world, gone to the other side. When we heard, it was like, “Wow, who’s taking over?”

But there are more - they did a great job. Their dreams came true: they saw people gathering, they saw the great councils develop, and they saw more children listening, more children being proud of who they were, and wanting to learn the lodges and go back to the dance and so on, so they fulfilled their vision very well.

So now it’s up to us to get the whole world through this purification. And it will be our grandchildren they said; the children of the grandchildren of that next generation who will see the transformation. And that’s what they say; that’s what they share.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NAMING AND RITES OF AGE

Q: It’s seems that the ceremonies are very important, and we don’t have so many. We have holidays that we celebrate but they’re a little different than the rites of age, or ceremonies that empower a certain event or to gather power in a certain way to help the person or the family or the tribe at a particular time. Also just knowing about the power spots, and how to gather energy when it’s needed - so much of that is missing.

E: Right. We’re starting to share that. We’re starting to do a lot of that. Go back and name them with their spiritual names, so to speak - a name that reflects a gift that they have. Like my name, OmeAkaEhekatl was given to me in Teotehuacan by Tlakaelel in 1979. And to understand a name is to understand your mission in life - what gifts do you have and what road do you take?

I think that will need to be more and we’re starting to do that - people are asking me, “Give me my name!”

We’re starting to name the children around our families. Like The Fire of the Elders is one child who’s very strong, he’s going to be a good, powerful man if he fulfills his mission. To have the fire of the elders is prayers of generations, and generations, and generations, and you can imagine how powerful are the

things he needs to deal with.

Then there are the transitions - like you said - the rites of age. Giving the young women the acknowledgment that they’re no longer children but are women now, and that’s a special thing that is nothing to be ashamed of – instead to be proud to be a woman.

We have their grandmothers and grandfathers, families and friends share with them the responsibilities of being a woman through ceremony; and the same thing for boys. We take them out somewhere in the mountains - somewhere where they can see it themselves as a transitional period.

Now they’re a man, now we can teach them the responsibilities of becoming a husband, of being a father, giving honor to their families. Not just to abuse women here and there, but to fulfill their mission as best as they can. Create clan, so to speak. When I of look at the positive thing in a gang - I was in a gang when I was in L.A. – you see the that you get.

The young warriors and the young girls are united in ing each other in the chaotic neighborhood or world full of chaos. You know their families are broken up, or there’s chaos in there, they need the of somebody who’s caring.

I think if we could divert the negativity of drug abuse and alcohol, the destructive aspect of the gangs and turn it into a positive thing like with council the identity of themselves as a clan. How can we turn that positive? Many traditional aspects still survive in clans, like growing food, or becoming artists. And there are different kinds of warriors. We wish we had more warriors, let’s say, in a non-violent way.

Q: Or protectors….

E: Right! Helping the elders fix their houses, or giving them rides, or taking them out somewhere; or do fun things with the children - teaching them art, or skills that they will need to live on their own. There’s so much that we can do positive and still maintain that clan system. It still has survived throughout the greater Nations of the Native people, like in New Mexico, or Guatemala, or down South in South America or the Hopis - still clan systems.

The clan mothers of the Iriquois still have the power of the matriarchal over the whole Nation, enhancing it. So I think there’s a lot we can still do with a lot of hard work. One thing we have seen is that there’s no more time to wait because the train is gone and we have to stop the train and try to talk someone into getting him on the train.

There’s no more, “Get on the train or be walking.” If you find that you didn’t get on the train at that time and something brought you back, you can’t walk no more and catch up with the train. For some people there’s no longer trying to talk somebody into anything, or grabbing and forcefully put them in the train. It takes time for the ones who really need it, and from us, time to get to where we’re going. So there’s no time to worry about trying to forcefully grab somebody who doesn’t really want to come, or listen, or change, or whatever.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HUMAN RACE

Q: Right, and it’s going very fast now you were saying it’s going to collapse soon.

E: Yeah, and for some people, a feeling of transformation has already started. Like Tlakaelel talked about a cycle of a thousand years or so of total illumination. Everything will become translucent. Everything will become this ring of high frequency. It will last about a thousand years. We’ll be coming into it soon, as we kind of leave this transformational period of purification.

Then some people are feeling that we’ll be coming like a crystallized fluid beings; becoming crystalline, translucent, transparent, so to speak, at a higher vibration, and that’s happening. It’s more spiritual, more understanding; the more you go into this dimension. the easier the transition will be for those people.

It’s like water; water has many aspects of itself. It’s like the third time we go back to the water. Solid H20 is ice, because of pressure and temperature. It’s solid, hard as a rock! But it’s still the same element - H20. Increase the temperature, or increase the pressure or decrease the pressure, it becomes water. It’s still the same element, but it’s fluid - it adapts, changes, and goes on.

Then we change again the temperature and pressurize, now we got vapor, steam - whoosh! The same element, but it has changed to its four aspects. Then it’s the 5th element is when it becomes evaporation. The vapors become clouds and as the light hits it we can see them; the light and the water become colors of the rainbow. Something’s happening there but it’s still H20 that the light’s reflecting through.

Now the crystals that we have are in that same kind of element of crystallization: of light crystallized, of water crystallized, of molecules maintaining a shape and form and vibration, moving within that to activate some things. We have to discover within each crystal what it is that it’s doing; what is the memory in it, what is it that it has?

And that’s some of the other transformations in our bodies that we are going to experience. We’re seeing it, we’re starting to feel it, and more people will be able to see and feel that themselves. If you tell somebody now they’re gonna become crystallized beings, they’ll think you’re nuts, right? How can you can you become fluid and crystallized at the same time? But you will.

Taking the shape and form of the different frequencies; different aspects of pressure and temperature, which effects all that all the time - it’s scientific. We’re mostly water; we’re mostly minerals. We have star dust in our bones, in our hair, in our eyes. WE’RE NOT JUST FROM THIS EARTH, WE’RE GALACTIC. We’re part of the whole galaxy; of the whole universe.

We find elements in our bodies that we find in deep space - or a microcosmos. It’s all about understanding and integrating ourselves back into the whole aspect of the universe; the spiritual, the dimensional, changing the shape and form of ourselves. It’s possible. That’s the spiritual transformation that we can do. Change our vibration; change the way we receive messages, or we give them out, like you said earlier - sending the vibration out and the message will hopefully hit somebody.

Q: Yes, that’s the impression I get when I think about crystals, because they store and transmit information, and it doesn’t take a very large one because these little microchips hold an awful lot of information.

E: Right. We’re using them all over the place - lasers, computers -and imagine if we could understand how crystalline we are already. It’s very powerful. This is where the shamans or the daykeepers are able to go in and come out, then come out and speak really wonderful things that make people say, “Wow, what a fantasy! What a science fiction!” But we know now that Jules Verne’s science fiction is reality today, like submarines!

Q: Yes, there’s no time limitation on the information that they can access.

E: Right! You know what, there’s a point when during the ceremonies that you come to see time on all aspects, and time of the Genesis, at the moment of Genesis - the beginning of All…and the person in the continuum of everlasting time, and you can see it all right in front of you.

And you wonder, “How can it all be happening at the same time?”

That’s what the question is! How can it be Genesis? But you see the whole formation of everything and the unlimited possibilities still going, and going and going. The time concept changes rapidly when we speed the time and the velocity of ourselves, or slow it down. The concept of time now is due to our dimension, our speed, and the shape and form that we have. We’re affected by the day and night; we’re affected by the gravity, we’re affected by the limitedness of our bodies.

But what if we could be able to burst through all that and leave the body behind and enter into the no-concept period… you know, the dreamtime. The visions visions are not just illusions - these things are happening, these things are showing. Much of the knowledge we have been able to know or to receive is through leaving this physical world.

There are things that were known, like the Titus in Columbia know, and the scientists are going, “Wow, how did you know that?” They said, “Well, this world is very limited; we travel in different ways.

Q: The ‘who’ in Columbia?

E: Titus, Yes, specifically the Titus, Inca; Inca people from Columbia. They’re experts in botanical aspects of thousands of plants. One of them is the ayahuasca ceremonies they have. They call it the ‘remedy of remedies’ that’s how they look at that - medicine. Where they become all there is; they know many things without ever going to school. There’s something there that they can share with us.

RECOGNIZING A GOOD TEACHER

They’re able to bring the medicines and heal people, then people transform. They never go back to being the same person that they were. But it’s the power of the shamans; their knowledge, their wanting to heal and help in a time when there’s so much sickness, and death. There are a lot of us walking around with a hunger for knowledge, there’s a hunger for spiritual awakening. There are also a lot of wolves out there too, taking advantage of the sickness and the weakness of the people.

That’s something that all of humanity should look at very carefully: who they’re following; who they’re listening to, and who they’re going to act upon what they say.

Q: There’s such a cynicism growing that there’s almost an expectation. You hear this phrase all the time, “Well, that’s just the way it is!”

I kind of wanted to also offer something as a reminder saying, “No, that’s not necessarily the standard that you should look toward as the norm.”

The norm is something really full of beauty and integrity. That’s what you should expect as a standard, and move away from teachers that are even suggesting by their own actions toward the whole that you should expect anything less. Especially spiritual leaders or people who are responsible for the health and well-being for people; those who are supposed to be public servants, in particular, to set integrity as the bottom line and then grow from there.

E: One thing we can look at, if we ever need any - use the word ‘judge’ - we can use it just as a word - to see, to feel, to understand to help yourself, or walk yourself with a master, or leader, or teacher, there are a couple things we are taught to look at: Does that person have the guidance and the blessing of their elders, because even the elders still need to learn.

So, is he still working with the elders? Do the elders say, “Oh yeah, that guy’s really a good dancer, a good singer, a good person. I go to see him all the time.”

If he has the iration, the of his peers - do they stand closer to her or him, so they walk together or do they talk bad about them? Like that. And, does he or she have the iration of the youth? Do the young people crave to be with that person, or is it fun to be with them?

Do they wish they could walk with them all the time, or do they go out of their way to say hi to that person? There are many different levels. Do they call up to spend time with them, do they request things, or do they come and help? Those are the things that we look at.

How is the environment with their families? Is it a unified family, or is it all split up, or is it really hard? Sometimes this work starts later in life. If it started later in life it really shocks what you had in that moment and really kind of destroys everything, and you have to start anew. So that’s an element to see how they

conduct in families, at least for us, it teaches us to see.

Does he control the sacraments or do the sacraments control him? In our way, they use alcohol. Do they use alcohol in a sacred way, or does the alcohol have hold of him?

Weigh their souls, their strength and their knowledge of, “Hey, if you take too much of this, of course you’re going to get addicted.”

That’s the duty of every person now to hopefully have enough maturity to be able to distinguish those things. They might want to grab somebody or something because of their own need, just grab something - you know, easy grab. A lot of our teachers are very strict; there’s a lot of work to do and a lot of challenges; they challenge you all the time to see how you’re going to work the alchemy, to see how you’re going to think on your own. Are you going to have your wits about you to look at all angles, or to deal with the situation in a good way?

Q: Thank you, Tata Erick.

Erick’s organization is involved with numerous ceremonies, gatherings, talks and teachings throughout the year. He offers both Mayan wisdom and teachings from the traditions of a variety of indigenous perspectives. Below is his information.

“Our mission is to connect people to the natural and spiritual worlds, and to bridge the wisdom of the Ancient Ones with the world of today, so that the diversity of life can flourish for future generations.”

Earth Peoples United - Tinamit Junan Uleu

P.O. Box 96

Yreka, CA 96097

Phone: 530.459.3471 Fax: 530.459.3176

Email: [email protected]

“If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person.

If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house.

If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation.

If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.”

-Chinese proverb