“I WANT TO DIE WITH MY HUSBAND!”

The University of Arizona, Tucson, 1997

 

Soft pink whispered across the silhouette

Of the Catalinas

Brushed by an artist of great ability

A single sweeping stroke

 

[California destruction, removal, and survival, c. 1850]

 

“I WANT TO DIE WITH MY HUSBAND!”

 

She did not know how

or why her homeland belonged to nilladuwi (rootless people, wanderers, Americans).

She did not know how the strange and ferocious beings

            could claim earth, earth that had forever belonged to everyone, equally.

She did not know why the wanderers killed

the people of many villages

because, it was the wanderers who trespassed into the homeland

committing acts of war.

She did not know the crimes the little children committed,

            making “justice” a rifle ball through their little hearts.

A victim and a witness to high crimes,

            She wept in the night, frightened.

Yes, it was true, yala’li (evil spirit) swept through the land butchering entire villages,

            but why?

Yes, it was true

            Inalludiwi moved into the homeland

            claiming all that they wanted, even children,

But why? And how?  Who could be doing this great sinfulness?

Why must the people be assaulted again and again,

            damaged badly then marched away from the homeland

by horrible men on horses, the thousand men with shiny rifles?

And why to the west (Legends say that out in the salt waters to the west there is an island where dead people dwell). 

Why to the west but to enter the land of the no-longer-living?

Woman could not stop trembling.

 

It was snowing this November.  The regular army, the Pit River Rangers and Kibbie Guards rounded up the remnants of the people and, after collecting them at Fort Crook, force marched them over Hatchet Mountain.  There was a foot of snow and more falling.  Slowly moving up the mountain was a herd of cattle that belonged to the army.  Trudging along behind the cattle came the very mottled yet proud and independent people, some bound with rope, others with raw hide thongs.  Guarding the people rode the army and the Volunteers.  Their intentions were to remove the people beyond the west of California

Infants were sick and hungry, freezing to death in the arms of their weary  mothers.  Yet they were forced on.

            The trail at the summit was long and flat and snow drifted, rippling in little ridges by the whipping, biting wind, yet the cattle were forced on and the people shuffled behind.

            A young mother carried her frozen baby over the summit.  Somewhere behind she heard the report of a rifle.  Then the familiar SILENCE.  She was too filled with fear to stop and look.  Fearing to drop her frozen baby, she trudged through the snow because if yali’li knew they would take the baby from her and cast it in the snow, forcing her on by bayonet.

As they moved off the Sierras and down into the Sacramento Valley there was warmth and some of the people thought they might survive, even those bound.  They would have performed a ceremony and a dance but for the sadness wrapped around their helplessness, and the glistening rifles looking at their hearts.

            She carried the frozen baby to Fort Reading and buried it under the river rocks.  She had no ceremony but for the silent tears from a heart torn with agony.  Then she hurried and feathered back in with her people who were  fed like hogs in a pen, hogs without a trough

 

Following urgent messages from Washington, D.C., and grisly, inflammatory headlines from local newspapers, the soldiers marched the people south to Red Bluff and to another corral half-full of natives, natives scraped from the foothills of California.  Again there was no relief.  Again they were fed like hogs.

There, heaving upon the river water, huge cattle barges. 

At daybreak some of the people were herded onto the barge to float to Sacramento while others continued the march.  It seemed the people were condemned to death but had committed no crime.  The Army and Guards separated the men from the women and children, and in silent pain they shuffled onto the barges to settle among the cattle and swine and decaying carcasses.

There was a frightened yet defiant woman, child living in her womb.  She loved her man so much she would not be separated from him.

She forced her way past the guards and onto the barge screaming, “I WANT TO DIE WITH MY HUSBAND!”  They met in the confusion of seeming human debris, him clinging to her, her clinging to a moment of forever, their child in her womb trembling.

At Sacramento all of the people were placed in the hold aboard ship.  When the ship was full it moved slowly towards Alcatraz Island then into the open Pacific, the scream of the defiant woman yet fresh in the wind.

When the ship was beyond sight of land the Captain ordered it to be spun around and around, expecting the natives to become disoriented, then he ordered the crew to throw the natives into the icy water.  There was fierce resistance to that command by the natives that academia has not yet put into words to mature as literature or history. 

A near mutiny by the weakened yet defiant people caused the Captain to put into port at Mendocino Station.  Later the remaining people were marched to Round Valley Reservation near Covelo.  Round Valley Reservation was a concentration camp waiting to be turned into an abbatoir.

Some people escaped the terrible higera and returned to our homeland and spawned our great-grandfathers and great grandmothers who gave birth to our grandfathers and grandmothers.  That generation created the mothers and fathers of those of us surviving today. 

It is said around the campfires in our homeland that some of the people were left on Alcatraz, and those not selected to be exiled to Quapa, Oklahoma, were marched across the Yolla Bolla Widerness Area to Round Valley, many perishing enroute.

Those destined for Oklahoma were placed on rail road flat cars and taken to Needles, California.  At Needles the train picked up more flat cars filled with peaceful Hopis who refused to bear arms for America.  Train lurched eastward.

It is whispered that some of those cast into the winter ocean somehow swam back to Treasure Island, encouraged and led by a bullet hawk “power” that came to them in their time of great need.

 

I often wonder about the people brutally torn from our homeland long ago.  They must have dreamed about returning and of somehow reversing the injury to our homeland and our little nation.

I often wonder who that woman was who defied the army guns, fought her way onto the barge at Red Bluff and proclaimed her love to all of the powers of the universe, to her mottled people huddled there, to all of the military, and to her husband.  I often dream that she was my relation, then I dream dreams proud and filled with love. 

And I often wonder if that young mother, who carried her frozen baby over the winter mountains and into the Sacramento Valley and heard the rifle report on top of the mountain but was afraid to stop and look back, ever dared to have children again.  Somehow I know she did and maybe I am a descendant from her.  Often this possibility makes me cry

Sometimes I, hear that single rifle report on the mountain, see the mother and infant bleeding in the snow, child shot through the head and mother shot through the heart, and thank her for having an older son, Niee Denicee, ten years old, who had a will and a spirit to live and, almost one-hundred years later, give us this oral narrative of his determination to survive.  Of such character are my people.

 

Sul’ma’ejote

Genius cannot be quelled by swords flashing in the sun

September 15, 1998, San Jose, CA

Genius cannot be quelled by swords
flashing in the sun

By
Sul’ma’ejote

Questioning the established form of native history as presented by academics (which includes an array of indigenous beings), and intending to repeal the current paradigm of viewing indigenous narratives as “myth” and therefore subject to rejection as “Old fabricated Indian stories,” one of my goals in life is to bring to the surface of the ocean of misinformation a different interpretation of the meaning and purpose of native oral literature, our histories passed from generation to generation through story, song, and dance.
I have been molded into a student of oral history/original narration/voiced literature, particular to my people who dwell in the northeastern corner of “California.” However, my pursuit of a greater understanding is not restricted to that arena. In a broader sense, my study is etched, like a pattern in sterling, in the western hemisphere, from the polar rim to the tip of South America. But it also includes the whole of the universe because oral literature is a universe-based event.

My tribes are currently known to academics as Achomawi and Atsugewi, and by unclean politics as The Pit River Tribe of California. Contrary to the changes of our identity, I remain Itami is on my mother’s side and Aw’te on my father’s. Politics, that abrasive element that has been created by EuroAmericans that interferes with even their own progress, has caused chaos among many native people of this western hemisphere.

As an Itami is/Aw’te person, autochthonous to the land area currently identified as “California,” I am rooted in history, culture, and tradition through the languages, oral literatures (story telling), and songs of my people – much of which is still protected by silence. As in all tribal homelands, language is the foundation of our identity and explains our understandings, while songs are our connection to the powers that move the universe in an orderly fashion causing us to seek and to entertain greater wisdom and knowledge.

Our oral literature, then, becomes our societal map. It is the spiritual instrument employing the voices of our ancestors that clearly explains our tribal experience from our origin, expanding ever outward to connect us to our destinies and destinations. Today, passing on lessons and legends in narrative form is often called “storytelling.” And the story, if accepted by bold elements of the heart, creates a sterling umbilical cord “attachment” from the listener and the earth to the center of the universe.

After we realize that we are breathing somewhere within the living fluid sphere of the universe, we then can better understand our Elders of ancient knowledge when they explain that ours is a never ending journey, that we are traveling in a vast and boundless season, restricted only by our individual capacity to understand and accept:

“I think there was no beginning,
Because if there was a beginning there would be an ending.
Since there is no ending,
There cannot be a beginning.”
(Craven Gibson, Atwum, 1972).

Craven, one of our Elder tribal councilmen (often slurred by my assimilated/acculturated people as “An old drunk.”), gave me these brilliant and powerful words after I had traveled around much of the world seeking the wise people, those yet close to the earth and nature power, asking if they knew of “a beginning.” At that time I thought that if I knew when the beginning began, I could explain when the ending was going to end – at least to myself.

I found no such explanation on my extensive tour and I was secretly embarrassed to learn that I had to travel only twenty miles from my camp to get the answer to my perplexing question!

The strength and validity of our wise people, both ancient and contemporary, is their direct connection with the powers of the universe and their capacity to feather back into nature when threatened, and equally, their wisdom to shun “civilization” and its spiritually corrosive effects. Often, if we have the capacity to listen and follow (an ability that seems to flourish among the youth of this generation), our wise beings lead us into expressions of life, or reveal information to us that sometimes tests our abilities to accept or to comprehend.

Therefore, the more we allow ourselves to learn and to understand the more that we discover the foundation of our culture is a spirit-based spherical-collage of intricate details (that received its pattern before earth began its journey around the sun) from our own experiences, to the balanced activities of our forefathers, to the intricate and necessary dreams and songs of our foremothers, all stirred together and assembled around the explanations of our purposes to exist, by our current Keepers-of-Wisdom.

It is, then, our cultural interpretation of our origin that gives us direction and causes us to strive for harmony within both our communities and our natural surroundings, while longing to leave a beautiful, wholesome earth for the Seventh Generation from now. Our efforts to accomplish this are put into motion with oral expressions that have been unfolding for thousands of generations, like the wings of an eagle, to mingle with the morning wind in flight. We understand more clearly the function of the universe as we know it and as it has been presented to us by our Elders and leaders through narratives, prayers, thoughts, and other expressions. This has been occurring ever since the universe began its movement towards eternity and our spirit-powers were present to witness that event which invoked each of our destinies.

The moral of the narrative, which often seems an almost tangible fragment of our history, is the energy that propels most native nations through the process of existence – usually in the face of an immense amount of negative power emitting from an invading and foreign politics that intends to deny us our presence upon earth. The oral literatures, the narratives, the lessons and legends each are wisdom/knowledge formulas that came to us wrapped in a mist of necessary presence and remain immeasurable with instruments of technology. In the future we will create greater expressions from our experiences as we continue to invalidate the maize that civilized societies have awkwardly wrapped around us.

Our references expressed around the council fires, presented from ourselves to other native nations, propose that we remain tightly constructed like a water basket and be of one mind and one body in order to stall the foreign exercise of executing extinction upon us again and again. Non-native people may be one of our means of protection in this episode as we all attempt to reject our deficiencies and re-connect with our spiritual selves.

Our historic tribal experiences are created from love and peace, from adventures and trials, and from gift -giving, and from narratives and oral literature. Collectively these activities provide us with a way to survive. Indigenous must again remember that the power in the moral of the story is its value to be understood, accepted, applied, lived, and expanded upon. It is that critical part of our narratives that are passed on in perpetuity by our keepers-of-wisdom that simultaneously validates the purpose of the universe to us, personally, and validates our presence to the universal powers that softly breathe upon us.

Currently there is an exciting adventure that we are experiencing as native people of the western hemisphere ( I do not mean to suggest that this phenomenon is restricted to the western hemisphere, but I am much more familiar with this one-third of earth so I will address that which I know best. Please, this thought must not be translated as an expression neglecting other world events that are wisdom based and therefore the most precious parts of other autochthonous cultures and traditions), but there seems to be an immediate and vast offering from the various native wisdom-banks and seats-of-knowledge explaining that we are a people whose journey through existence began in space-exotic places, often from among the stars and galaxies, or remote and familiar places beyond.

In one of the origin narratives in my homeland it is understood that by magic, Silver-gray Fox, on a rope made of songs, came to this world from the land beyond the stars, evading Old man Coyote. Coyote was always changing things Silver created (In the structure of the universe Coyote was not gifted with the power to create. He did, however, receive the power to change things). Because of this, Coyote became jealous and changed everything that Silver created. (Coyote was not only jealous, he was crazy for creative power).

For millions of seasons in the land beyond the stars Silver could not teach Coyote to behave, to leave things alone, so Silver absconded. When Silver came here there was no here, here. He lifted the center post of his chema’ha (ceremonial round house) and dropped through. He traveled through time and space on that magic rope which he attached to the bottom of his chema’ha. With his magic Silver replaced the center post so Coyote could not discover how he left the land beyond the stars.

But Coyote did discover. Threatening a little grass basket in Silver’s chema’ha with cremation if it did not tell him where Silver went (little basket told in order to stay alive), Coyote came here with his own well thought out method, free falling and screaming through time and space. Of all the places in the vastness of the universe, Coyote just happened to land on the roof of Silver’s new chema’ha, “Crash! Thudd! When we ask our Elders how these things could happen they say (with a giggle), “I dunno. That is just the way it has always been with Coyote.”

Recently the Chumash of Southern California revealed some of their songs, many that have been silent since the original people felt the swords of Missionization. Some of their songs are of their journey through the stars to arrive here. The more the native people mingle with one another in the safety of confidence, the more the songs and narratives will appear that speak of spiritual and stellar travels. The Serrano/Cahuilla are now releasing knowledge about their journey through the stars to arrive here. Their Elders have suggested that it may be nearing the time to prepare to return. Almost every college student is familiar with the travels of Quetzalcoatl, who, in a political action, was put out of his homeland in what now is Mexico, traveling east to become the Morning Star. Many narratives of native nations contain references to stars and traveling to and from distant places, some so distant that it hurts both thought and imagination to follow.

However, history books created by invading populations have portrayed the indigenous of the western hemisphere as morbid, sloven shadows. Colonizers must do this in order to control the lives of the people that they are dominating. This allows the invaders to appear wholesome throughout the process of colonization. The challenge now is for indigenous, with the help of others, to throw off the layers of misinformation that have been piled for centuries upon us, like dead leaves on the forest floor, and annul the history-created distortions that cloud-liketend to accumulate over us. After that annulment we will initiate safeguards against further distorted attacks upon and erosion to our histories.

“This is a good day to live.” Thank you Susan Harjo (Champagne, Native American Portrait of the Peoples, p. 786).

Throughout hemispheric native country there must be a challenging of the established order of history. The indigenous are boldly speaking and singing about “origin.” The prevailing thought is that we are children of the universe, that the whole universe is our “Father,” and that every element within earth combines to be our “Mother.” Too, we must not restrict our dreams or alter our thoughts simply because someone else commands us to do so, verbally, with the printed word, or with a gun.
Threats cannot damage our purpose, our knowledge and wisdom, or our dreams. These gifts were given to us and we are now obliged to pass them to the next generation through narrative, legend, song and dance.

In our future there are both political and social terrains that may be difficult to traverse, but we will because we must. As Carlos Cordero stated,

“We come from great people
And so we must act like great people
Because we are great people”
(Hogle/Wilson, Surviving in Two Worlds, p. 90)

A thousand years ago, all knowledge and information was oral in form and passed from generation to generation by the spoken word or song, writing not yet established. The “word”, then, was the rule and the law. The word was beyond sacred. It was the trust-core of the community of humanity.

*Hisnawa, we must not allow our wholesome spirits to be eroded by employing the tactics of the invading forces, nor should we be dwarfed to the specifications that the colonizing powers dictate. We have more dignity than that. In defense we will accomplish this by reestablishing our proper position in the journey of humankind, and by acknowledging our universal origin as we express our histories in a variety of comprehensive ways.

What does storytelling and California native culture and history mean to me as an indigenous person? Aside from becoming much more personal with the vastness of the universe through recently unveiled native wisdom and knowledge while studying all forms of earth-life, I marvel at the function of entirety while I wander among the stars seeking answers to questions that are yet whispers from eternity to the heart of our life-spirit. I also spend more time worrying about civilization’s relentless assault upon earth’s delicate habitat. But the question is best answered by my 5th grade summer school student, Theresa M. Jolivette (Summer, 1997, Sacramento, CA).

“History is everything.
History is old redwoods, art, animals, battle grounds.”
(Theresa and several of her classmates are featured in “California Cobblestone,” 1998).

Theresa is correct and her expression deserves both to be studied and to be pondered. Our histories are everything. They have been diluted and gnarled by the establishment ever since Eric the Red trespassed upon “The People of the Dawn,” and attacked a group of nine natives, killing eight. “Attacked in turn by a second group of natives in skin boats who fatally wounded Thorvald with an arrow.” (Waldman, Atlas of the American Indian, p. 79).

Historically this defensive act by “The People of the Dawn” is viewed by the masses as savages perpetrating high crimes against a peaceful and adventuring people. That is not so. Eric the Red, his children and his clan were expelled from their Norwiejan homeland because Eric committed heinous crimes. Wandering and angry, they assaulted first and last. That assault upon the native body beginning A.D. 894, continues in a variety of modes up to this moment.

Who will put our literatures and our interpretations of world history into perspective? Who will cause historic truth to surface and to mingle with indigenous knowledge so it can be properly reflected upon? Those among us, *Hisnawa, who cannot be defeated and whose dreams cannot be amended or made mute. Not only do we come from great people, but we emerge from genius, too. All people must know, genius cannot be quelled by swords flashing in the sun.

Sul’ma’ejote/Akon

* Hisnawa: “Young Warriors

He Cried

03-05-09

HE CRIED.

Quickly look around at the condition of Mother Earth. There has been (and continues) rampant abuse and disrespect for the landscape/ the inter-dependent balance that lived healthy for all seasons is now very sick with the diseases neglect and disrespect.. Water is sick, ocean is dying, land is bare of forests and animal/bird life, air is terribly polluted and the sky holds no flocks of a million birds. In a very short time the strangers from Europe and other countries far away, taking more than necessary while destroying that which they view as excess, have defiled, dirtied and damaged little earth maybe beyond recovery.

Pukamukas is a term identifying the wonderful indigenous people who walked earth before us. Often they are called Elders. Please know that the first ingredient of an Elder is wisdom – not age or wrinkles or white hair. My life has been flavored by Elders. They are often silent, thoughtful, long to judge, and lack the macho bravado that announces a “warrior.” Today it is evident that few indigenous remember the requirements of a warrior and rely on TV to produce a character that they can emulate. Often the Hollywood presentation is gnarled to fit the price of the ticket and remains distant from reality, but it remains an image planted in too many minds.

Grampa Ramsey might not fit every quality of a Pukamuka, but to me he was wise, thoughtful, and pointed my brothers and me in a more stable direction and destiny. Neither was he my DNA Grandfather. Really, he was married to my father’s Great Aunt. Aunt Lorena remained Aunt Lorena, but when my generation started having babies, “Uncle” Ramsey magically turned to “Grampa.”

Often I saw my Grampa out in the field during a storm. He explained, “I love a beautiful storm.” Once when he was out there it felt like I was intruding “something” but he never mentioned it.

At another time he called for me. In the mountain dawn it was blowing and snowing sleet and it was freezing cold. Any gust almost burned my skin as it whipped, spinning along. He was standing out in the field watching a small flock of the geese, the ones we call Canadian Honkers. His posture was stiff and his body language said that he was deeply troubled by something, again. I really did not know to approach or stay a distance from him. Soon his posture relaxed and his body language invited me into his circle. Just know that I keep true to the words of the Elders. The indigenous conversation omits many of the “connecting” words English uses for a smooth presentation because people should know what the subject of conversation is.

After a quick greeting he said, “Look out in field. There few geese. Used to be million, everywhere, every time. Now there’s few.” Then he said, “Look at mountain. Bald headed now. Used to be big forests. All gone. Somebody cut down, haul away. No place for bird. No place for bear. No place for life.” Then he said, “Look at our people. Broke family. Husband drunk, gone. Maybe jail. Mother no stay home, bar. Childrings hungry. No respects for family any more.” I digested his thoughts while I watched the few geese, wondering how much more complete and full life and landscape was during his younger years. By the time I was born, assimilation and acculturation were allowing the cutting down of trees. Erasing an entire forest was just something that happened. Funny, I never thought about the birds or bears, deer or squirrels and little creatures. With Grampa’s concern, they were vivid in my thoughts now. Where do they go when their shelter and often their super market is erased? Simply gone one day. How do they hide from rifles, shot guns stalkers and murderers? Where do the smaller life-forms go? What holds the earth from washing away in the winter with no living vegetation with roots? Where do animals and birds get out of the hot sun in the summer? The Pukamuka knew that killing something in nature was premeditated murder and to somehow balance the deed with the necessity of the event, so the event could find pardon among the stars, prayers, songs, rituals and ceremonies were performed and were so absolutely necessary. The hunter and fisher asked the great powers holding the universe for forgiveness because they did murder but it was to feed the hungry people. They fed the people that sing throughout the day and around the camp fire, the children who scream with delight in the spring , the Elders of our experience who sing, pray and do ceremony at dawn. The hunter and fisher provided for those that have been appreciating and respecting nature and the great powers for all seasons. The universe issues a blessing through the Pukamukas which encourages the hunter to go out again, and the fisher to mend his net and prepare the spear and the smoker. And so it was. Flowers and forests breathed, animals listened to the melody of sun rising. Life’s orchestra continued in balanced rhythm for all seasons.

Then from the east bad news came with the messenger at dawn. Strange beings acting out of balance with nature were moving across earth. They came in huge canoes from the sunrise. It seemed they did not know how to conduct themselves in the land of another people. The law upon this continent has always been, “When in the land of another people, don’t turn a leaf, don’t break a branch.” This rule applied equally to all tribal people from the North Pole to the tip of Patagonia especially the hunters.

In vicious violation of the rule came the plunder-minded, diseased strange beings from the east. Their vision of things real was warped and deformed. “There is a beautiful temple. Attack it, knock it down. Burn it. There I a beautiful village. Attack it. Kill the natives, burn it. There is a gathering of medicine men. Cut their heads off. The animals and birds are running wild, kill more of them than you can eat then leave the murdered body in the sun to sour and rot.”

Grampa looked across the near empty late winter field that should be bustling with a million geese preparing to fly south. I assumed he thought about all that was wrong now with a world that was all right only moments ago. He shivered, his bottom lip quivered slightly and he said, “The white man brought many disease, but the bad one was disrespects.”
Then he looked to the present. “Babies neglected. Father [too many] drinks, in jail. Mother [too many] drunks, in bar. Fathers and mothers harm the childrings. Disrespects in every home and everywhere. Young men, women drinks, beat on each other, childrings. Animals, disrespects. Birds disrespects. Water dirtied. Land in pain, hurts. Forest, trees gone. No more salmon, river. No more herd of deer, flock of honker. Sky he sick. Ocean sick, many poison. World maybe not live long.”

He trembled again saying, “Too many family break up. Too much pain. Too much disrespects.”

There in the silence between dawn and sunrise and under the frozen clouds, Grampa’s bottom lip quivered. In a thundering quiet filled with a helpless wonder “why,” he cried.

Sul’ma’ejote

OBAMA: One change natives can believe in

12-18-08

Mr, Barak Obama,
President of the USA,
The White House,
Washington, D. C. 20008

Sir. I have been supporting your position for some time because it is 516 years past time for change in the indigenous arena. Positive change in your Administration will not happen unless the entire cabinet is fresh and I admire your political structure so far, but there are also crusty old bureaucrats that have been cultivating and inheriting their offices for so long that it now seems to be a family enterprise instead of a function of government. I will be happy when that bulwark is ejected from the government and new, strong, positive visionaries are installed. For more than half of a century the Elders and Pukamukas (Wonderful wise people who walked earth before us), prayed at dawn for a changing of the gnarled concepts of racism, hate, suspicion, Apartheid and careless indifference born to our shores and created out of assault, destruction and weaponry. This is a heinous assault upon my people that is justified, pardon and praised by a callus and visionless American society today.

I am an indigenous Professor, born into tribes in California, and I see many areas in basic elementary, through Graduate School curriculums, that must be changed. History upon this hemisphere did not start with Columbus’ importing diseases and criminals into sterling indigenous societies any more than history of the African continent began when Columbus left the Ivory Coast in the 1480’s with a hold full of shackled Africans heading to the slave markets throughout Europe, but too often this is what is fed to natives and Americans in doses too big and confusing to deny. Your curriculum committees in your education departments should look upon this area of education, see the atrophy of worthy information, and create an antidote, then inject the infected study while casting out that which has purpose only in propaganda, and I feel they will.

You are well aware that indigenous creation legends are valid native history, and should not remained branded as “myth.” According to my tribal legends, “our history” begins with Thought alone in the vast. Thought wanted to be something, so changed to voice. Voice wanted to be beautiful so changed to song. Song sang for a “million years or more,” and a little light appeared far away. Song sang and sang until the vast was filled with stars, galaxy’s, Milky Ways. Eventually song sang this earth into presence. At first it was all water, but song created a small island floating upon the water. Much magic and dreaming thrived in those days, and magical, beings appeared. Annikadel was first, then Qan (Silver Fox), then Cloud Maiden. More helpers came to sing, dance and stretch the island into the world we know today, preparing it “…for children coming.” Europe was not a place at that time and in our understanding, Europe is a part of this world, neither older nor more just than any other land. Across this hemisphere indigenous are forced to accept the European paradigm of history and all else identified as “education.” Education, then, remains a guarded institution from Europe, excluding all other forms of indigenous knowledge. A clear-thinking Education committee should address this deception very soon.

Yesterday you selected a person for Secretary of Interior. Secretaries of the interior have been, for centuries, inheriting millions of dollars per year plus the lives and resources of natives across this land, seemingly as his “step-children.” He then collects the money for native health, welfare and education, then neglects the “step-children” with a velocity resulting in penurious, heinous neglect and abuse. Because the Secretary is appointed instead of being voted into office by the natives, his position uses precisely the same strategy as any dictator of any “developing” country. His appointment dictates that his allegiance be to the Congress, and not to the indigenous. The indigenous land and rights become an easy target for the Secretary (like government representatives shooting quail in Texas), as he takes from the natives and delivers his take to the Congress. He then is protected by a comfortable Congress no matter that the “booty” delivered to Congress is pilfered from the indigenous. From a little distance this scenario looks much like a dope deal with the Congress receiving the lion’s share.

This, sir, is an area that screams for immediate change. A dictator should not be encouraged in a Democracy.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs could be re-named the Bureau of Congressional Affairs, because the will of Congress has always been driving the Indian Bureau, not the needs of indigenous. Within the Bureau of Congressional Affairs there could be an Office for American Affairs because the current intention of the Indian Bureau is to stand for American interests and against the indigenous purposes.

Should indigenous considerations ever be weighed in governmental agencies, the non-native “experts” must be made mute and their slanted logic and questionable knowledge must be extracted from any opinion involving indigenous. In their finest moment, “experts” have historically maintained an arena where the knowledge and wisdom of natives remains a feeble act coupled with questionable eloquence. The “experts” need not talk for natives. We have polished that activity in the vast universities across this land, yet we remain neglected in our honed state as if we yet sit by the side of the trail rusting while the strategically armed procession marches into the west to master it. Sir, this Apartheid must be recognized, arrested, and disposed.

Thank you Mr. President. Many children are writing letters to you today. Please read their thoughts before you read this one. I am sure their messages are pristine and filled with sterling dreams for the future of America while they hold your hand and in their other hand, their hearts. Sincerely,


Sul’ma’ejote (aka)
Darryl Babe Wilson,

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS DWELLING AMONG SAVAGES

September 17, 1990
U. C. Davis

Five Hundred Years Dwelling Among Savages was first scribbled when some of our tribe left the Shasta County Jail at Redding, California; Susanville jail; and Reno, Nevada jail chained to each other in sets of three. We were being transported to Sacramento Federal Court because of our October 26, 1970 confrontation at 4-corners with the U. S. Marshals, U. S. Forest Service, Shasta County Sheriff and Deputies, and the F. B. I. We were building a home in our ancestral homeland. They said we were trespassing on federal property but they refused to charge us with criminal trespass because the law knows that aboriginal land title still resides with the original tribal people, it has never been surrendered, transferred, exchanged or extinguished.

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS DWELLING AMONG SAVAGES

Across the thundering white waters of eastern ocean, angry
Across the golden prairies of blue, soft mornings, angry
They came hungry
We fed them fruits of Mother Earth, still angry!

We did not know their greater hunger was to possess the land
To spill blood upon the world
To rape Mother Earth
To make sky grey with sick clouds where birds do not dare fly
To make stinking rivers where salmon cannot splash and curve and dive
To make our people their personal servants, expendable

Deep in their eyes something
something missing
something tormented

In their eyes also, the look of panic-caused pain
In their hearts an unknowable vastness of ugliness
given to them by a God made by their own hands
who writes upon stone with an iron finger

Loudly they came, bringing with them laws
that appear as a deep canyon filled with yala’li (demons)

Their laws and their God teach them to lie
to cheat
to steal
to worship false sayings
and to band together as a raw-hide knot
the money worshipers
and those whose possessions are of a greater value than all of life

They teach my weak and feeble people all of these things, also

Their laws are wrong upon wrong
piled like leaves of many autumns

In their talk they say:

“I am the challenger of this wild land
I will mould with my hands and blue blood a new nation
A new nation with liberty and justice for all people
I will protect all living things
Knowing adversity,
I will be peaceful to all people , forever. Amen”

After uttering this before our Council-of-Elders
in the presence of their God
and at the feet of their law, the Christians
Raped Mother Earth for gold
Burned and destroyed our villages on their path to possess the metal-that-makes-men-
crazy
Defiled the power-places of our ancients
Killed the terrorized children
with weapons made by the gnarled hands of an iron God
Destroyed the dreams of our Elders and
attempted to sever my people from our dance with destiny
as has been our duty from the moment
the stars were sprinkled in the darkness
and songs and dreams were placed within and without

They destroyed the vast, black rivers of buffalo
Made rock walls upon the rushing rivers
so spring salmon and that of autumn
cannot return to the people splashing in morning sun

In their hollow hearts a thought, as a metal ball in an aimed weapon:

“Kill the buffalo and the red nations die
Kill the salmon and the red nations perish
Kill the forest and the meadow
and the spirit of the nations vanish
Kill! Kill! Kill!”

In this season there is not much remaining to kill
But they stumble upon each other
To accomplish this dream of their angry God

The savages rage across earth
They are killing other nations
They are killing their own children in the vast cities
Thy have turned brothers upon sisters and tribes against nations

With a twisted heart that invading spirit smiles
when the red hand is raised against the red child
when the red nations tremble
when quivering voices sing songs from distant lands with strange meaning
shattering the melody of silence

For many seasons my people have survived waves of destruction
For five-hundred years we have dwelled among Christian savages,
invaders from beyond the rising sun

As we have been instructed
we must, yet, live with a good heart
For we must continue for the time eternity matures into forever
and forever into wisdom


My Grandfather spoke to me these words
Long ago as It Ajuma (Pit River),
rushed and rippled to the sea,
during a full autumn moon

With tears of bitterness dimming his clouded eyes
And he dreamed of once more dancing
Dis’wass’sa’wi (war dance)

Sul’ma’ejote
Autumn 1970
Manacled to my people

SPLASHES OF RED Autumn 1867, Tuwutlamit Wusci*

Autumn, San Jose, 2008

March 10, 1991, U. C. Davis

SPLASHES OF RED
Autumn 1867, Tuwutlamit Wusci*

The stench of burnt gun powder filled the air
Sunrise, it lay in soft, thin, blue clouds
Over the earth of my people
In the high desert
South of Modoc, west of Paiute

As the Great Powers dwelling in the seasons of our world
Move the goose and the salmon and the deer to migrate
So, too, that awesome power
Moves my people to gather
For the last time before Ascui freezes the landscape,
To talk and to plan for the future of our children
And this is how it has been since the beginning, long ago

Trembling they gathered ever alert
Knowing the Americans were tracking them
Yet they obeyed that Great Mystery
And gathered as is the custom
Of all of the seasons of our lives

They smelled the sweat of horses
And of wela (devils)
They heard the distant report of the deadly rifle

Yet they listened to the life in nature moving around them
And they gathered
At tuwutlamit wusci they gathered
for the last time before Ascui gripped the land
And spring was already a dream

They did not think about
the Paiute woman
who slept with the soldiers
that they invited her to the gathering at tuwutlamit wuschi

At dawn they came on sweating horses
With their rifles in their hands
Frightened! Young mother ran towards the safety
of tuwutlimit wuschi

Too late!

When she looked back
There was blood in her tracks
But she felt no pain
for the pain was not hers to bear

Quickly she took the cradleboard from her back
Her breath would not come to her
as she lay the cradleboard in the autumn sun

The blood in her tracks
from her baby
Shot once through the neck
once but forever

With trembling hands
She dug a little grave
in a frightened crevasse of the shaking mountain
and dried her tears with the dust of sweet earth

She placed the eternal bundle
In that shallow effort
Covered it with stones and a wilted flower she found

Then, in fear with a shattered heart,
She cried
Among the splashes of red, Autumn, 1867.

*The Infernal Caverns are near Likely, where my Great Grandfather and my Grandmother were born.

[Cradleboard: The willow and twine, flat, basket babies are strapped in and is carried on the back of mother or father while the tribe is traveling. Often a child is strapped in a cradleboard and dangled from a tree limb, there to be moved by the wind, flitted by butterflies, sung to by the river and the forest while being maintained in peaceful suspension, weightless in forever and that which follows forever, thinking and dreaming]

{At Infernal Caverns the Army fell upon a gathering of my people and committed heinous crimes. That crime will be adjudicated some day. The Army will be found guilty. The judge and jury will pardon the crimes barring all testimony of the victims or their descendants. But that attitude, too, shall change even as winter turns to spring).

Sul’ma’ejote

ORO! PLATA! ORO! ORO! AZTECA ORO!

July 26, 1991, U. C. Davis

ORO! PLATA! ORO! ORO! AZTECA ORO!

Simultaneous with the European penetration into the western hemisphere was the discovery that there was much gold and silver here. Europe was famished for gold and silver. Christobol Colon happened upon a land that is not mentioned in the Bible and was unknown to the Europeans. The precious character of this land is yet, after 500 years, unfamiliar to the Europeans that have failed to cultivate a spiritual working sense with it.

Contrary to popular thrusts of American History, October 12, 1492 is not the beginning of history upon this hemisphere. It is, however, the date for an initial assault that has endured in its consistency for over 500 years. “Assault” cannot be, in the thinking of the indigenous, a “discovery.” It must be viewed as an instance of invasion, and unwanted and unwelcome penetration into this homeland by foreigners, aliens, with gnarled, hideous manners.

Arrogant Americans, foreign greed and basic stupidity maintain the position that “America” was an empty land just waiting for someone, totally lost himself, to discover it and for God to place a heavenly people here. That thought is totally out of balance. Now the indigenous must put forth an ancient thought with correct information offering the truth while explaining the purpose for earth, and the purpose for different types of humanity to be placed upon specific land areas. This information is in our many legends.

One truth is that this hemisphere was not waiting for anybody from anywhere to “discover” anything. When I was in second grade and was explaining to my tribal Elders how Columbus found us, an old Grandmother asked me, “Did this man find the sun, too because our land was never lost any more than the sun was lost.” All of the elements of this hemisphere were established in their origin, feathered into the purpose of the universe, and peopled with the correct type and balanced numbers of humans and nature, a balanced velocity disrupted and desperately trying to correct itself.

The intense confrontation that occurred in the South Seas between the indigenous and invading Europeans was and remains one of distorted values. Value, to indigenous, means “worth,” the worth of your dreams, the worth of your thoughts, the worth of your ancestry, the worth of your destiny. Real value, not the amount of money someone will offer you for stolen gold or pilfered silver.

As Cortes moved into Mexico and marched upon the indigenous dwelling there with the intention of destroying them and taking their gold to his Sovereigns, while claiming all of the indigenous world for them, he was directly in confrontation with the value the natives placed upon everything. His was a singular money-oriented value system. To the invaders everything was measurable only in money equivalencies. Indigenous viewed gold and silver for its beauty. We value truth, trust, and honor. We value our lives and the life of earth with an intense awareness of its spiritual self and its personification is made manifest in our greater knowledge, while we recognize its precious “power.”

Pizarro entered a near identical social phenomenon in Panama and the areas of South America that he violated. He learned that the natives did not measure their entire mode of existence by a money system, but that they also worshipped the earth for its beauty and purpose and not for the nuggets in the streams.

“Pizarro invaded Peru. He found that the empire was divided and feuding, there was a civil war. In the north Atahualapa was established. Huscar, his brother, established rule in the south. They were not of a sharing mind. Each brother wanted all of the Peruvian kingdom for himself. Their armies fought. Pizarro sided with one then the other. When war and diseases introduce by Pizarro and his men took its toll, the brothers found that they were the head of a wounded and desperate society, Pizarro stepped in with a few men and guns and took command.

“In exchange for his freedom, Atahualapa provided Pizarro with $8,000,000 in gold. Pizarro received the gold, Atahualapa remained in chains.” (The Americana, 1911, PAZ-PUB).

The value system of the Europeans remains in direct conflict with that of indigenous. It seems that the strangers, the aliens, have a vast emptiness within them since they have continually demonstrated an inability to understand the beauty, wonder and purpose of earth. They exchange earth for money, making it real estate and property similar to slaves and prostitutes. It is a constant wonder to traditional natives how this thinking can exist in the universe. That thought pattern is out of balance and has no healing purpose for little earth.

The spirit of earth and the power of the universe and the spirit-power of indigenous cannot be separated. Therefore when natives are denied access to earth and the universe’s power for very long their hearts and spirits begin to atrophy, and earth sickens.

“The problem of the Indian is rooted in the land tenure system of our economy. Any attempt to solve it with administrative or police measures, through education or a road building program, is superficial and secondary as long as the feudalism of the gamonales continues to exist. Gamonalismo necessarily invalidates any law or regulation for the protection of the Indian.” (Mariatequi, 1974, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, Austin U. p 23).

Democracy is as much in confrontation with native psyche as is the Euro/American system of values. Democracy has invaded the native village and now demands that the natives participate in “Democratic enlightenment,” reform, or perish at the point of the sword. It is not spiritually healthy for indigenous to believe or participate in the foreign notion, Democracy. We are in balance only when we adhere to our own system, when we exercise our original “way.” More and more indigenous must explore our history and glean from it that which has always been valuable for the generations, employ those findings for the benefit of our existence, and deny all else

From where does the command emanate ordering the natives to obey alien rules and participate in “Democratic” elections while we are confined away from participation in “The American Dream”? It comes from the lethal end of the barrel of the Democratic cannon.

Originally, the indigenous way to disagree with any subject was to remain absent and not be available to be “counted.” Calculated, deliberate absence remains the most powerful “No” vote upon this continent among the indigenous, a thousand shades of Democracy and an array of cannons notwithstanding!

I this alien way, a “no” vote doesn’t count so those tribal members assigned the duty to count, assume any absence would have been “yes,” and the counting continues, the guide, an alien form of arithmetic. The older generation said that it takes a pretty smart Indian to understand the ways of the foreigners. Ramsey Blake, an Elder from my homeland said, long ago,

“The white man don’t sleep. They stay awake and think and plan all day and night. They are awake always and they have machines that stay awake longer than they can. They are against us. These machines take very good care of the white people, but they are against us!”

This clash of alien cultures and of indigenous value systems must be examined, dissected, and corrected. To attempt to be of any assistance to the “problem” by creating new layers of bureaucracy or pretended self-determination programs (programs that emit from the established, moldy bureaucracy) is useless.

The original native system of values must be understood and accepted by all people or earth will continue to sicken. The interpretation of the value system must come from the histories of the natives, free from any influence of immigrant interests. Somehow, someday, the concerned native people must gather and seek solutions for the many problems born here on fetid ships not long ago. The “invasion mentality” so prevalent in European societies has no desire to accomplish this.

Indigenous cannot afford to wait another 500 years while bureaucratic rules pile upon bureaucratic laws, like dead wood piling in the forest waiting only one spark from one match. We must free ourselves from Democracies and bureaucracies and re-establish the natural rules that govern this earth. All else will be futile.

Ramsey Bone Blake (Grampa) is no longer with us. His heart rests with earth and his “power” is within the universe. He dreamed beautiful dreams.

In one dream he saw, gathered beside It’Ajuma , (Pit River) one Chief from each of the tribes and nations of this hemisphere, from the “Circle” (North Pole) to Patagonia. This gathering would communicate in a spiritual way, in prayers and songs and thoughts, in respective native languages. In this manner there would be little need for translations because each thought would be a truth. Each prayer would be real with real meaning to the spirits of earth and to the power of the universe.

When this meeting was over there would be a sweet ripple across earth, a cleansing. The water would be pure. The air would be good. Mother Earth would be healed. All of the native nations would be whole again and they would communicate in their own languages and do that which they were created for long ago when earth was brought forth by a song of Qon (Silver Fox) and made perfect by dance.

The foreign people would then have to examine themselves. If they correct their lives and participate in the “real” laws along with the natives then they could stay in this land. If they cannot correct the difficulties cultivated within them, then they must depart with their difficulties.

This is such a beautiful dream. Immediately, Chief Buckskin, Erik Matilla and I began to assist Grampa in making his dream a reality. The date we set for this gathering was during the full moon of October, 1984, near the huge canyon where Sul’ma’ejote (Fall River) and It Ajuma (Pit River) merge.

That gathering did not happen. The dream is yet unfulfilled. There are still many accomplishments in the future of indigenous of this hemisphere. Quetzalcoatl is to return on 1 Reed and assume his governing of the people again. His re-entry into this land is yet in the future. 1 Reed occurs every 52 years. Potentially, Quetzalcoatl can return any time.

Perhaps Grampa’s dream will occur soon. We must prepare ourselves for this event. We must seek our true values and hone them to a sparkling edge. We must re-claim our languages and employ our native spirituality in its purity as it was just a few hundred years ago. Yes the native nations can and must become whole again. Any delay in accomplishing this task must be accepted as neglect by indigenous ourselves. Nobody can do this for us and nobody but ourselves can keep us from accomplishing it.

Oro and Plata cannot purchase the emotions that accompany the completion of a blessing, or a touching, or a feeling or a healing. It cannot purchase life. It cannot buy happiness. It cannot displace sorrow and sadness or mend a broken heart.It has not been a measurement to all that is good but may to continue to be a gauge for all that is evil.

Here is a letter to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinan of Castile/Aragon from Cristobol Colon, October 13, 1492. The Bahama Islands. The homeland of the Lucayo indigenous.

“Most precious King and Queen,
“As I promised in our encounters upon the European continent, I have touched the earth of a western land. The people are friendly and they will give me whatever I desire. Should I ask for the land and the mountains and the trees and the rivers, they would obey my wish. For the promotion of your greatness this land is discovered. It is yours, your most perfect majesties.
“I have claimed all that is known of this most beautiful land and all that is unknown for the crown of Castile/Aragon. There is no opposition to your claim! Indeed, the native people are happy to be part of this gift to my King and my Queen. The people seem to know that your happiness is of the utmost importance.
“All that I have touched today belongs, now, to the crown that placed me upon this happy journey. All that I touch tomorrow and the many tomorrows shall be your possession also. It is your possession my King and Queen. It shall forever be part of your gracious kingdom, even as I shall forever remain your humble servant. When I encounter the Great Kahn, I shall promptly inform him of your just claim to this land.
Cristobol Colon, October 13, 1492. Cathay.” (Discovery, Parker, John, 1972).

That alien contact was not a happy encounter for the indigenous. The destructive force that the mentality and diseases Cristobol Colon invited upon the natives of this hemisphere has not abated. They have mutated many times but they have not abated. They are alive and intend to invade all that they touch as they multiply and divide to multiply again.

At this time the natives must gather together, and gather those people of strong hearts and good thoughts with good intentions. We must purge the old thought from ourselves and re-establish our original purposes. We must shed Democracy as the old skin of a rattler and return to a system of real and true values. The sweet spirits of approaching generations of children deserve nothing less.

Sul’ma’ejote

[At the end of November 2008 a great gathering to unify the indigenous of this continent occurred in Mexico City. My baby girl, Cuauhxicuatl, danced there for all of us, for all of the children, and for Mother Earth]

THANKSGIVING SUNSET

11-28-08, San Jose, CA

THANKSGIVING SUNSET,
11-27-08. Santa Cruz

It seemed to be a very long time from dawn to Thanksgiving dinner, but when we finally gathered at the beach to eat, to enjoy each other’s company, to laugh together, and to bask in the soft, sweet, fuzzy sunshine of Autumn at the California beach, the time flashed by so very quickly!

I recall eating a variety of foods, enjoying each unique flavor, and enjoying more the laughter that was muffled by a mouth full of wonderful food. Then someone directed my attention to the sunset. Red sun seemed to be racing for the softly curved horizon.

Out at the ocean’s edge, sun was a throbbing “cherry” as it shined through the smoke and smog gathered there in the distance. An old memory came to me and was captured like a spring salmon in a net.

When I was just a boy, long, long ago, our little tribe of cousins always had our pockets full of marbles. Among our marbles we always had our favorites. A heavier marble was the best “shooter” because it would scatter the marbles collected in the middle of the circle we drew, usually with a stick, and sometimes knock several marbles out of the circle that we added to our collections. “Steelies” (a big ball bearing) were too heavy for accuracy. If the shooter knocked a marble out of the circle it became his “keeper.” Once there was a magic red marble in the circle. We called red ones “cherries,” and they were rare. Finally, my turn to shoot came. I shot and hit the cherry pretty good, knocking it out of the circle. It was mine! I was so happy. From then on until I lost it to a dare (I did not jump off the bridge first because I really was “chicken”), I carried regular marbles in one pocket, but in the other pocket there was only one marble, my cherry.

Sometimes I held the cherry up to peer deeply into it while holding it near the sun. When the sun was maximum, the cherry was bright, bright, sparkling red. It was perfectly round and so pretty. It was a see-through. That “cherry” red is how the Thanksgiving sun appeared over there resting on the ocean’s curved horizon, a see-through. In a moment it slipped off and fell just beyond the edge, sinking into the waves.

Sun’s bright red now was just a wine-glow. In another moment the glow faded like the embers of the sleeping fire. Quickly we gathered things together and as the seagulls patrolled in the twilight, hurried to our homes, the vision of sunset yet warming the sweeter parts of our hearts, emotions, and memories; the “cherry” magic lingering.

Babe

KINDER and GENTLER, a NEW WORLD ORDER

1-24-91. 4:51 am, U. C. Davis, Davis California

KINDER and GENTLER, a NEW WORLD ORDER

You have dropped a silver quarter and heard the silver “ring” then dropped a copper-lead quarter and heard the dull “thud.” “Thud” is how the unpopular American Administration phrases, “Kinder and Gentler” and “New World Order” pounds upon, while irritating, my life’s spirit.

Peering across the 500+ history of the original natives with the European/American experience, I see not a “new order” of life but the same order that entered this domain in 1492 with theft aforethought and intentions of damaging or destroying all it could not understand.

The diseased and mentally deranged Europeans entered this hemisphere with cannons firing. Any grade-school American History book clearly shows that the Pilgrims came not so pure but with loaded muskets in one diseased hand and a Bibles in the other diseased hand. Most Americans should know through our exposure to American History that this hemisphere was claimed as private property for aliens who lived upon the European Continent, a crime unacceptable, agitating every indigenous generation.

In 1775 the Americans, with war tactics, set upon the British occupation in America. This war severed the loyalty between England and the colonies, lasted several years, and destroyed thousands of lives while multiplying and promoting hatred and distrust.

The battles between the north and the south are familiar to Americans. Its cost in human lives and in precious possessions has not yet been fully measured or appreciated.

The indigenous watched, wondering about the spiritual disturbance abundantly available to the strangers as they purchased Louisiana from the French, Florida from the Spanish, and Alaska from the Russians. In May 1846, Americans declared war upon Mexico, a military action that produced the “Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo,” February 2, 1848. The provisions in this treaty expanded the borders claimed by America.

“New World Order” has a monotonous meaning to many indigenous people. As we watched the approach of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, some of us witness an invasion. Certainly the approaching threat did not come because we requested it. History clearly displays those ships entering this homeland without seeking permission to enter, a societal violation that has not qualified for pardoned and is yet in hemispheric contempt.

This arrogant maneuvering and the invasion of Mexico and south might be termed a “New World Order,” by those penetrating our homeland with disrespect and disregard for the indigenous people. The intention of the strange beings to settle upon this hemisphere created open and constant conflict between the natives and Europeans which is an act of European aggression that has not ceased, creating an act of native resistance that cannot surrender. Because of this, the coveting of my homeland by wandering strangers is vivid in my mind, vivid and putrid.

Scanning history we find continuous conflict between the natives and the invading forces. As the 13 Colonies were being established, the natives had to give ground or be slaughtered, and usually both. As the Spanish moved into Mexico, Central and South America, the natives had to give ground and be slaughtered. As the British moved into Canada, the natives had to give ground or be slaughtered, and be slaughtered while giving ground. While dreams of Democracy were blossoming all across “The land of the free,” natives gave ground and were slaughtered. After the slaughter the strangers took possession of earth and instituted an indigenous diaspora unparallelled by any Christian or non-Christian society, ever. That mentality permeates this American bureaucracy, today

Moving into a land area and talking possession of it while slaughtering all resistance in order to create a “New World” is not new to indigenous. From the first penetration of the Europeans into this land there has been, in the invading thought, an idea that there must be a radical altering of the life style and World View of the natives.

The slaughtering and damaging of native nations was a most heinous activity. As the Americans moved across the earth, our nations perished. This action was not one of kill or be killed, rather, defend your home and die, Indian! The results of that reprehensible act finds pardon within “The American Dream,” and within the sacred halls of the United Nations, but not around the fire.

Somewhere in the shallows of the European world view there is a tumor-like growth that does not allow some of them to find satisfaction. It may be a sort of distortion. One thing is certain, however, this element magnifies the anger that moves many Americans to coil like a white rattler, then strike!

Indigenous were there under the sun when the first disease infested Europeans seized the islands. We were there fishing and diving when they plundered Cuba. We were holding a prayer ceremony as they butchered indigenous and destroyed Mexico and Tenochtitlan, Guatamala, Peru, and all destinations south. We were in the rainforest when they penetrated Brazil. Today we still feel the brutal velocity of the European character that came in relentless waves of murder and destruction. From the eastern nations to the western, from the southern to the northern the natives on this hemisphere were condemned with angry slogans and attacked: “barbarians,” “cannibals,” “savages,” “prairie niggers,” “bucks and squaws,” “nits make lice,” just like the American Administration condemned the people with slogans, then attacked Panama. There is nothing “new” about this “order.”

The rhetoric emerging from the vicious attack on Grenada was no different than the rhetoric emerging from the vicious American attack on the Modocs in the lava beds or the Itam Is (First people) at Infernal Caverns, Sept, 1867, a hundred years after America began fabricating its humble and peaceful facade. It was no different from the planned destruction of Big Foot’s people at Wounded Knee, the “battle” of Sand Creek, or any other confrontation of indigenous as we defended our lives and our homelands.

Angry slogans coupled with paranoia moved the American military to attack Japan. On August 6 (Hiroshima) and August 9 (Nagasaki) the Americans dropped atomic bombs upon that nation, damaging the people there while damaging the whole earth. In this event the Americans proved their unnatural catering to hatred driven by paranoid slogans that did much damage to the world. Certainly this is not a display of a peaceful people in balance with the life forces all around.

To date that atomic attack is the only time in history that nuclear devices were used against a population, except for the constant bombing of reservations across this land in the name of technologic investigation and the dumping of atomic waste in our rivers or near our homelands in the name of progress.

Angry words moved the American military to strike the people of Korea. Angry words moved the American military to strike Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos, and although indigenous “served” in those conflicts, angry words moved American society to pardon their activities while the bureaucracy devised schemes to sieze the homeland of the natives serving. This left the indigenous homeless in a political system that did not want the indigenous body, thought, or dream to soil their deserving lifestyle.

The Bush Administration has been in power for only two years. In those two years it has managed to incite two invasions, one into Panama, the other, Iraq. While we are led to believe that the disposing of the leader in Panama was an act of ridding the world of a drug dealer, it must be also understood that the drugs in question were destined for a demanding America. Americans needed something to somehow appease its deeper feelings of isolation and of being unwanted or unwelcome anywhere in the world. An out come of that activity also promised that Americans profiting from the Banana Republics retained the right to exploit the indigenous population. Today SCUD missiles are exploding in Israel. While the American war machine damages the Middle East with a million tons of bombs, we are told that we must destroy this “mad man,” this “maniacal being,” this barbarian” who honors only his activities of “naked aggression.”

Some of the American population wave flags to support military invasion while some of the population burn the American flag in protest of pointless war tactics. A wise native Elder sends a note to Washington, D. C. “There is no power in destructive only in creative.”

The purpose for this war, according to the Bush Administration is to clear the way for a “New World Order. We have not been told what that new “order” might be, but many of us translate it to mean, “America, President of the world.” That is not new. That attitude, that destination has been etched in blood upon this native land from the moment the intruders from Europe sliced parts off of a native person’s body to see if indigenous felt pain, only moments after touching the beautiful Caribbean islands.

There is an old story yet told in my homeland that talks of conflict which reminds me of the American Military-Industrial-Complex and general American greed:

Old Coyote was laying in the shade and became hungry, terribly hungry. He heard something shuffling in the bushes. Carefully looking under the low branches he spotted some quail, maybe a dozen of them. Silently he crept upon them while they were feeding on seeds under the leaves. They didn’t see him. He pounced! He got one quail. Reaching and grabbing in every direction while they scattered in panic, he got another. Quickly he thought that if he caught them all he would have one long satisfying meal. He stood on one quail and grabbed this way and that with his free hand. When he jumped up snapping at one in flight overhead, the one he was standing on got away into the brush, running. In the chaos a quail flew right into Coyote’s nose, “Wham!” Coyote swatted it out of the way so he could see better but he opened his hand to swat and the first quail then got away! Now he had nothing and had to work hard catching something because the quail scattered and vanished quickly. He jumped this way and that way snapping and grabbing. When the dust finally settled Old Coyote discovered that in his greed to have them all, the two that he caught got away leaving him not one feather. Old Coyote remained hungrier than ever, and more unsatisfied.

This morning the sun peered through the industrial smoke and smog hovering over Sacramento. The city being under a silent cloud, I could imagine what it must look like in Baghdad, bombed but in a moment of chaotic rest. Seeing that red glow rise slowly, I again asked myself, “Why? Why is it necessary for bombs to shatter the lives of any people anywhere in the world?”

That is the view from here. It would not be so painful for our children to be sacrificed in a war if we knew war had a useful purpose. It would not be so difficult to plan for a future, if we knew there was going to be one. Then I would not tremble, but somehow answer my ten-year-old-twin boys when they demand, “Why doesn’t George Bush go over there to war? He always says ‘we, we, we’ but he is not there, like Sonny!” As do all the children of the world, they have a right to demand a future. And children have a right to expect the American President to be there marching at the front since so many big brothers (Sonny) are there and their families are expecting them to soon be bleeding in agony.

The “New World Order” is not new at all. It is the same old order that moved the Europeans to this continent with the intention of clearing away the indigenous while creating another Europe, to create kingdoms for themselves, and to exploit nature for personal benefit. Europeans are not indigenous to this land, they are foreign. Many of them cannot understand earth or feel its life, and their actions are made manifest in their destructive deeds.

I distinctly recall Mr. Bush saying he wanted to be known as “The Education President.” Last year he cut the budget for education and scared poor people from applying to colleges if they need financial assistance. This month he is authorizing bombs to be dropped on the “Cradle of Civilization.” Maybe it is time to start history and the world all over again. That should occur when a nuclear warhead totally eliminates the Garden of Eden. And, too, maybe that is the time for Mr. Bush to begin the “Kinder and gentler” relations with the remainder of the world, should there be any. We shall see.

Sul’ma’ejote

WEHELU PEACEMAKER, Craven Gibson

[Should indigenous Historians cease parroting this fabricated and calculated thing, “American History,” and take a deep, fresh breath after opening the window to look out on a new dawn, please let us correct this “warrior” image because it is false, deliberately, and in its falsity leads weak brains to accept that which has never been true concerning indigenous of this hemisphere]

WEHELU PEACEMAKER, Craven Gibson

Atwum (Big Valley, NE California. Mt Shasta 30-miles north. Mt Lassen 29-miles south). According to our lessons and legends given to us by our Elders (which many of us did not pay attention to because we were busy growing up and we were pup-dumb), it takes a certain qualification to become hisnawa. Hisnawa means “warrior,” and it often means “Young warrior.” Not just anybody can become a warrior.

Later, at her home in Burney, Gramma Lela Rhoades, further instructed my brothers, cousins and I about these things. She was not really my DNA “Gramma,” but she was the mother of my foster mother and the boys of our families called each other “cousin,” so that settled it. She was “Gramma..” We youngsters were new at being English-colonized and Gramma was not practiced at the English language, either. We did not understand her native dialect much, but with help from my foster mother, “Tiny,” Gramma again explained to us the original rules that we must fulfill before we could become a warrior in the “old way,” a goal that we must always reach for.
It was in the 1940’s. Hollywood and history books were busy characterizing indigenous beings as blood thirsty savages living only to attack and burn the wagon trains of peaceful, God- fearing pioneers who were innocently looking for 600-million acres to take by military force, and a hundred-million Indians to kill. Text books and the movie industry displayed that the indigenous were a population devoid of feeling and emotion so it could not hurt for us to die a mangled death – especially after the assault of the Army, the “Good guys.”

The American culture pointed out that there was unequivocal proof of indigenous callousness because, in theaters across “The land of the free,” young natives did not cheer when the Cavalry came “Ta-ta-ta-taing” in at the last moment in the show, natives bleeding, broken and splattered all over the place.

Gramma said:

A warrior is strong and use his strength to care for the people
A warrior is peaceful to everyone
A warrior does not wait for peace to come. He take peace and offer it first
A warrior is good hunter, fisher, tracker. He can run over mountain run down and catch deer, carry it in and share it. He can carry five salmon across valley to feed hungry family
A warrior always eat last
A warrior always speak true
A warrior respect earth and all people
A warrior sing at dawn for all people who cannot sing for self
A warrior, responsible
A warrior never thinks of self first, but others
A warrior dance for earth
A warrior take children to flower in meadow
A warrior have good heart, take to people in need
Above all, warrior respect “way” and Aponi’ha (Great Universal Powers)

It was the middle of the 1960’s, turmoil and revolutions all around. From many fires (African, Oriental, LaRaza, This homeland) there was a cry for justice and respect. The younger generation was not listening when wisdom spoke. Some of us in our mountain tribe were furious because America kept taking from us and giving to strangers whatever it took from us. The Americans and the strangers said that everything belonged to them because God made everything just for them. We could not agree with God or the strangers. Some of us younger ones decided to strike back, an eye for an eye.

We made plans. True, our logistics were flawed, but we were in a hurry. We gathered a variety of old, rusty guns, most of them without bullets. Angry with America, we went back to Craven’s home for his approval of our war plan. He was home. We filled his little house and spilled over into the yard. We laid out our plan. He thought and thought, then, he squeezed into a small back room emerging with an old, broken, weary, rusty rifle. He must have found it after the first battle ages ago.

Where we could all see, he dusted it off then looked around the room with sad, old eyes and said, “Outside, yard.” We thundered out, old home swaying. He gathered us in a circle, him in the center with his rifle. He chanted then spun the rifle over his head and danced. He passed the rifle behind from hand to hand while dancing and chanting. Then rifle was overhead spinning once more. He stopped singing and dancing and held rifle with both hands overhead.

He was out of breath but said, “This (dance and chant), dis’wassi’wi.” “This (still holding the rifle up and shaking it) not our way.” He looked upon us searching our faces, searching our hearts. We came to him for war approval but he said the rifle was not our “way.” Dis’wassi’wi seemed like approval, but then…. We were confused and disarmed in our confusion.

Again his old, cloudy-blue eyes searched our hearts. He was looking for understanding within us. His tired face turned to each of us and his eyes that have seen many seasons pierced our aspirations. He gave a slight nod with his white head and something like eagle power wrapped around him. He said,

“I don’t need warriors with guns in their hands. I need warriors with their hearts in their hands and all of their dreams in their hearts.”

Silently we filed away into the valley evening filled with mosquitoes. He returned to his coffee cup. We did not understand his words. They sounded like a truth. They sounded simple enough but what did they mean for sure? We were all smart enough to know, weren’t we? In my old pickup I found a piece of paper and a pen. I wrote his words so I could not forget. Arriving at camp I read his words again. I pondered there under the stars. Over the velvet evening again I heard Gramma Lela’s explanation of a warrior in our “way.” When my spirit heard her say, “A warrior take peace and offer it first,” I cried.

Late, I flopped into bed and dreamed. At a table Craven was there with the great Generals of the world. The Generals got up, went to their Captains and ordered them to dismissed their mighty armies, then gathered at the table again. In a silent contest they were seeing who could offer peace first. I snapped awake from that beautiful dream and thought, “Yes Craven is a warrior, a great warrior and he must be honored above all Generals for all time.”

In my heart I called him Wehelu Peacemaker (Chief Peacemaker).

Sul’ma’ejote