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
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
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
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
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
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]
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]
Sunday, November 30, 2008
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
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
Monday, November 24, 2008
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
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
Thursday, November 13, 2008
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
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
Sunday, November 9, 2008
CUAUHXIHUITL, PRAYER
CUAUHXIHUITL, PRAYER
November 7, 2008
I read again her letter. Then I went to a hill top overlooking the valley. Cuauhxihuitl is traveling from Peru. She went to Machu Picchu and made a ceremony and prayer for many of us. Now she is on her way home but stopped in Mexico for a four day prayer ceremony for us all, whatever and wherever we may be. I made my way through the sun and shade of Nahok (Autumn), calling deer and rabbits, coyotes and hawks and I tried calling a Blue Eagle. Several deer appeared and hawks and crows and squirrels, but no coyotes or blue eagles.
Her words came to me again: “I am holding my own fire in the cave.” “ I am asking for your love and prayers, especially during the last few days of the ceremony.”
Then, a little deer appeared under a little tree as if by magic. It looked at me, then wiggled its ears and its tail. I cast a thought to the deer saying, “Doseji (Little deer), Cuauhxihuitl wants your thoughts and prayers at this time. Do you have a thought for her?”
Little deer looked through me, then turned and looked into a distance in the south that I can only imagine. Its head came up proud. Both of its ears focused south, listening intently. Like a statue it held that perfect posture, thinking. Then deer relaxed and continued the hunt for acorns. But in that statuesque motion little deer seemed to say, as it peered south, “I too, am very proud of your accomplishments, Little Eagle. From the deer family I send thanks for all of us forgotten ones being included in your prayers.” Deer swished its tail then delicately stepped into the shade of the forest and vanished.
From among the great universal powers, the Great Mysteries, Grampa Ramsey appeared there under the autumn sun, like he was a photo reflecting from clear, clean glass. He eyes sparkled, he giggled what I call a horse-giggle then said, “Cuauhxihuit, Spimami (Cuauhxihuitl, I see you). Hataji spimami jeskehar ( My heart sees your thoughts and prayers). Tusi jeskahara tolol nika (It is good you think of everyone and everything just now). Ina’lum’qotmi (My heart belongs to you). Hay’la’cheska, Akwir la’cheska (I love you, we love you).” I wondered how Grampa could pronounce her name so clearly because he went away from us almost 25-years ago. Then I thought that they must have met many times in their dreams.
With quiet and dignified confidence Grandfather melted into the cool autumn sunshine. Departing, he again gave his horse-giggled and said, “Cuauhxihuitl jeskahar Ju’wa yamakela.” (Cuauhxihuitl thinks of all Grandmothers).
I could think of nothing to add to the message of deer or the message of Grandfather so looked south, asking a cloud to deliver this message, then, there under the autumn season I cried, because I am here without purpose and she is there with so many. Akon
Note: Cuauhxihuitl calls me Akon. Akon means, Grampa
November 7, 2008
I read again her letter. Then I went to a hill top overlooking the valley. Cuauhxihuitl is traveling from Peru. She went to Machu Picchu and made a ceremony and prayer for many of us. Now she is on her way home but stopped in Mexico for a four day prayer ceremony for us all, whatever and wherever we may be. I made my way through the sun and shade of Nahok (Autumn), calling deer and rabbits, coyotes and hawks and I tried calling a Blue Eagle. Several deer appeared and hawks and crows and squirrels, but no coyotes or blue eagles.
Her words came to me again: “I am holding my own fire in the cave.” “ I am asking for your love and prayers, especially during the last few days of the ceremony.”
Then, a little deer appeared under a little tree as if by magic. It looked at me, then wiggled its ears and its tail. I cast a thought to the deer saying, “Doseji (Little deer), Cuauhxihuitl wants your thoughts and prayers at this time. Do you have a thought for her?”
Little deer looked through me, then turned and looked into a distance in the south that I can only imagine. Its head came up proud. Both of its ears focused south, listening intently. Like a statue it held that perfect posture, thinking. Then deer relaxed and continued the hunt for acorns. But in that statuesque motion little deer seemed to say, as it peered south, “I too, am very proud of your accomplishments, Little Eagle. From the deer family I send thanks for all of us forgotten ones being included in your prayers.” Deer swished its tail then delicately stepped into the shade of the forest and vanished.
From among the great universal powers, the Great Mysteries, Grampa Ramsey appeared there under the autumn sun, like he was a photo reflecting from clear, clean glass. He eyes sparkled, he giggled what I call a horse-giggle then said, “Cuauhxihuit, Spimami (Cuauhxihuitl, I see you). Hataji spimami jeskehar ( My heart sees your thoughts and prayers). Tusi jeskahara tolol nika (It is good you think of everyone and everything just now). Ina’lum’qotmi (My heart belongs to you). Hay’la’cheska, Akwir la’cheska (I love you, we love you).” I wondered how Grampa could pronounce her name so clearly because he went away from us almost 25-years ago. Then I thought that they must have met many times in their dreams.
With quiet and dignified confidence Grandfather melted into the cool autumn sunshine. Departing, he again gave his horse-giggled and said, “Cuauhxihuitl jeskahar Ju’wa yamakela.” (Cuauhxihuitl thinks of all Grandmothers).
I could think of nothing to add to the message of deer or the message of Grandfather so looked south, asking a cloud to deliver this message, then, there under the autumn season I cried, because I am here without purpose and she is there with so many. Akon
Note: Cuauhxihuitl calls me Akon. Akon means, Grampa
Friday, November 7, 2008
ET’WI (Eagle)
March 16, 1984, Bo’ma’rhee (Fall River Mills, CA), morning
(Polished, U. C. Davis, February 16, 1991, 6:11 am)
ET’WI (Eagle)
[To keep the record straight, Ramsey Bone Blake was not my DNA Grandfather. He was married to my father’s great aunt. He was “uncle” in my youth, but after my generation began having children he automatically changed into “Grampa,” because he had a good heart and we liked him]
With the words of an old Grandmother, Ah’poni’ha, mee’moo’ischi’ee (Great Mystery, we are you little children) swimming within my spirit, my twin boys and I went to Grampa Ramsey Bone Blake’s home. Jo’ji (bone) is one of his “real” names but his father worked for a white man named Blake. That is how his father acquired that name. Ramsey lived in a little apartment between Fall River Mills and McArthur, overlooking It Ajuma (Pit River). To the north across the flat valley and looking over the mountains, Ako Yet (Mount Shasta) stood strong, heavy and frozen.
Sun was white-gold and frigid. Wind moved but with chilly reluctance. Frosted leaves in his driveway scurried in a swirl, stirred by an invisible, icy finger. Earlier, the engine of our old truck growled and died. It did not want to go to work today. We did not relish working in the frozen atmosphere either (cutting wood), so we went to Grampa’s for warm milk and cookies.
We had just killed a buck so we took some back strap to Grampa. The old ones of our life appreciate good meat and they prefer heart, liver and back strap of the deer. With fried potatoes, greasy gravy and warm biscuits, the back strap is delicious, so delicious that it must be tasted with the heart of your life-spirit.
He was at his plain little table in his worn apartment. Instant coffee, a cup and a spoon were on the table and steaming water was on the stove. When he saw my little boys he began heating milk in an old pan. Soon they were having warm milk and cookies. Ramsey had just finished breakfast and was reading from his almost ragged Bible. His countenance was one of surprise and happiness to see us, but there was a strange thickness to his manner. Somehow I knew that he wanted to talk. He always called it “Talk that doesn’t mean anything anyhow.” But I always delighted in listening to him because he had so much substance, depth and historic meaning in his “talk.” It was not gossip or news. It was a lesson in life and the “way,” wisdom passed to this generation.
After shaking his hand (which was like shaking the hand of a stout thirty-year-old weight lifter who was really ninety-years-old), I accepted a cup of coffee and while the twins rolled around on his floor spilling warm milk on the shaggy carpet and bouncing off the bed like little cubs, he talked. I listened.
He put both hands on the table and opened them like one would open a book, softly but deliberately, expecting the page that one searched for to fall open at the proper place. With sober graying eyes he looked out the window into a past that had no limit to time and into a future that had no boundary. His eyes did not focus upon anything in particular, but he saw life in its totality. He was solemn. His bottom lip trembled slightly and his hands vibrated just a little from his memories. Silence was thick all around us.
Then he forced a smile and his countenance softened. He reminded me of a balding white-haired Elmer Fudd. His eyes twinkled and he began.
“People don’t believe me what I am telling. It true.
“When I young and before I was buckaroo, I dream of being Medicine Man, powerful doctor. I want Elamji (spirit power) tame many Damaa’goomes, capture and tame dini’howes. In this way I am strong medicine doctor. I have power. I want powerfulness. White Horse Bob taught me one song. The one Qon (Silver Fox) sing when he make world. That White Horse Bob Dini’howe, that song.
“I try. I got cleansing, went to Rainbow Falls. Run there early in morning. I talk. Spirits not answer. I got ‘nother cleansing and travel to En’ehal’ewi (Falls on It Ajuma in the big canyon near Fall River Mills). I got cleansing again and run to I’paa’ka’ma (Bald Mountain), to top. I talk, I holler. Again, spirit not answer. Grandmother tell me get cleansing then go Sa’tit (Medicine Lake), to stay ‘til power claim me. Maybe I return too soon. Maybe I was not strong enough. Maybe I was shy.
“White Horse Bob say get purification, go into Pit River Canyon (between Little Valley and Big Valley). There I find cave. It will not be big. It will be small one. That place not look like power-place but it is. It will fool you.
“He say I find old tree hang ‘cross, high over river. It not reach other side, so I run length of tree and jump far and reach other side. I needed to reach cave. I need Dini’howe
“White Horse Bob say big spider live there. It curl up in corner by roof. It have red mark on belly. That is how I know it proper place.
“After my old people cleanse me I find cave and cross over on danger tree – like White Horse Bob say to be. I brave. Some power pull me into canyon, into cave. When I enter it dark, but ‘nough lite to see after a while. Spider was there. It not curl up but hang in net, red mark on belly – just like White Horse said it was to be.
“Spider not like me. Cave not want me. So I go to Big Valley few days, “wandering” before I went home. For my Dini’howis, I choose Ro’nee’wee (Origin of Thunder) Ch’art’esee (Origin of lightening power) and Et’wi (eagle, white). Just some how, white eagle seem powerfulness.
I pray. I pray. I pray. I do every thing like told but I not have strength to have power. They tell me jump in Jema’wehelu’tiwiji (Burney Falls). I do. They tell me fast. I do. They say ‘be dreamer.’ I dream many dreams. But still I not medicine man. I not have power tame Dini’howis, Damaa’goomis (spirit helpers required for doctors and medicine persons).
“It seem I sick, something – dizzy. Something not right. Something wrong. I not know what could be. I not think ‘bout womans. I not think ‘bout drinks. I not think ‘bout bad things but good. Still….
“Day I know not have power come. I home, door open. Thunder pound sky. Try break it! Through door I see lightning flash far past the valley. Then flash far past mountains, goin’ away. It fade. Thunder beat sky but goin’ away. It go ‘cross valley and roll heavy down canyon. It fade to quietness.
“Like spirit, like clean window, Et’wi, White Eagle, land in door. It fold wings look side to side. It look all ‘round but not look at me. Et’wi have yellow eyes, black in middle, and yellow feet. Rest look white eagle but small, black feather over each eye. Claws make scrape and thud when grab board on porch.
‘It say nothing, just look but not at me. Then turn, look over left shoulder. With move it in air, glide ‘cross valley. Like thunder, lightening, it fade, leave no shadow. It glide up, over mountain in west, just like thunder, lightening, vanish.
‘Then I know I not be Medicine Man, not have “power.” Rejected. Power no want me. I no have strength overcome it.”
I do not remember breathing through his entire story. After a long silence we made fresh coffee and small talked. He got the boys more cookies and milk. When we finished our refreshments we left Grampa for our little home in the solitude of the Great Canyon, there on the eastern end under the Hat Creek Rim.
Grampa left many stories with me, some that I am recording for my children so they will somehow know the strength and conviction it takes to become a person-of-power, a Medicine Man. Then, perhaps, they will not flit across earth taking titles like “Pipe Carrier.” “Road Man,” “Medicine Man,” from people who have no authority to issue them. “Power” and “Medicine” are not elements of life issued by people. They are pure parts to the Great Wonders that must be earned, deserved, maintained, and something one was born to receive.
During the full moon of October, 1984, Grampa left us. Like Et’wi, his spirit floated over the valley leaving no shadow. It glided up over the western range, climbing with the wind whispering under its power, and vanished. Our little world seemed empty, again. We wept.
* Damaa’gomis and Dini’howes are spirit/power helpers. It is said the life spirit of the male being is weak without one or the other.
(Polished, U. C. Davis, February 16, 1991, 6:11 am)
ET’WI (Eagle)
[To keep the record straight, Ramsey Bone Blake was not my DNA Grandfather. He was married to my father’s great aunt. He was “uncle” in my youth, but after my generation began having children he automatically changed into “Grampa,” because he had a good heart and we liked him]
With the words of an old Grandmother, Ah’poni’ha, mee’moo’ischi’ee (Great Mystery, we are you little children) swimming within my spirit, my twin boys and I went to Grampa Ramsey Bone Blake’s home. Jo’ji (bone) is one of his “real” names but his father worked for a white man named Blake. That is how his father acquired that name. Ramsey lived in a little apartment between Fall River Mills and McArthur, overlooking It Ajuma (Pit River). To the north across the flat valley and looking over the mountains, Ako Yet (Mount Shasta) stood strong, heavy and frozen.
Sun was white-gold and frigid. Wind moved but with chilly reluctance. Frosted leaves in his driveway scurried in a swirl, stirred by an invisible, icy finger. Earlier, the engine of our old truck growled and died. It did not want to go to work today. We did not relish working in the frozen atmosphere either (cutting wood), so we went to Grampa’s for warm milk and cookies.
We had just killed a buck so we took some back strap to Grampa. The old ones of our life appreciate good meat and they prefer heart, liver and back strap of the deer. With fried potatoes, greasy gravy and warm biscuits, the back strap is delicious, so delicious that it must be tasted with the heart of your life-spirit.
He was at his plain little table in his worn apartment. Instant coffee, a cup and a spoon were on the table and steaming water was on the stove. When he saw my little boys he began heating milk in an old pan. Soon they were having warm milk and cookies. Ramsey had just finished breakfast and was reading from his almost ragged Bible. His countenance was one of surprise and happiness to see us, but there was a strange thickness to his manner. Somehow I knew that he wanted to talk. He always called it “Talk that doesn’t mean anything anyhow.” But I always delighted in listening to him because he had so much substance, depth and historic meaning in his “talk.” It was not gossip or news. It was a lesson in life and the “way,” wisdom passed to this generation.
After shaking his hand (which was like shaking the hand of a stout thirty-year-old weight lifter who was really ninety-years-old), I accepted a cup of coffee and while the twins rolled around on his floor spilling warm milk on the shaggy carpet and bouncing off the bed like little cubs, he talked. I listened.
He put both hands on the table and opened them like one would open a book, softly but deliberately, expecting the page that one searched for to fall open at the proper place. With sober graying eyes he looked out the window into a past that had no limit to time and into a future that had no boundary. His eyes did not focus upon anything in particular, but he saw life in its totality. He was solemn. His bottom lip trembled slightly and his hands vibrated just a little from his memories. Silence was thick all around us.
Then he forced a smile and his countenance softened. He reminded me of a balding white-haired Elmer Fudd. His eyes twinkled and he began.
“People don’t believe me what I am telling. It true.
“When I young and before I was buckaroo, I dream of being Medicine Man, powerful doctor. I want Elamji (spirit power) tame many Damaa’goomes, capture and tame dini’howes. In this way I am strong medicine doctor. I have power. I want powerfulness. White Horse Bob taught me one song. The one Qon (Silver Fox) sing when he make world. That White Horse Bob Dini’howe, that song.
“I try. I got cleansing, went to Rainbow Falls. Run there early in morning. I talk. Spirits not answer. I got ‘nother cleansing and travel to En’ehal’ewi (Falls on It Ajuma in the big canyon near Fall River Mills). I got cleansing again and run to I’paa’ka’ma (Bald Mountain), to top. I talk, I holler. Again, spirit not answer. Grandmother tell me get cleansing then go Sa’tit (Medicine Lake), to stay ‘til power claim me. Maybe I return too soon. Maybe I was not strong enough. Maybe I was shy.
“White Horse Bob say get purification, go into Pit River Canyon (between Little Valley and Big Valley). There I find cave. It will not be big. It will be small one. That place not look like power-place but it is. It will fool you.
“He say I find old tree hang ‘cross, high over river. It not reach other side, so I run length of tree and jump far and reach other side. I needed to reach cave. I need Dini’howe
“White Horse Bob say big spider live there. It curl up in corner by roof. It have red mark on belly. That is how I know it proper place.
“After my old people cleanse me I find cave and cross over on danger tree – like White Horse Bob say to be. I brave. Some power pull me into canyon, into cave. When I enter it dark, but ‘nough lite to see after a while. Spider was there. It not curl up but hang in net, red mark on belly – just like White Horse said it was to be.
“Spider not like me. Cave not want me. So I go to Big Valley few days, “wandering” before I went home. For my Dini’howis, I choose Ro’nee’wee (Origin of Thunder) Ch’art’esee (Origin of lightening power) and Et’wi (eagle, white). Just some how, white eagle seem powerfulness.
I pray. I pray. I pray. I do every thing like told but I not have strength to have power. They tell me jump in Jema’wehelu’tiwiji (Burney Falls). I do. They tell me fast. I do. They say ‘be dreamer.’ I dream many dreams. But still I not medicine man. I not have power tame Dini’howis, Damaa’goomis (spirit helpers required for doctors and medicine persons).
“It seem I sick, something – dizzy. Something not right. Something wrong. I not know what could be. I not think ‘bout womans. I not think ‘bout drinks. I not think ‘bout bad things but good. Still….
“Day I know not have power come. I home, door open. Thunder pound sky. Try break it! Through door I see lightning flash far past the valley. Then flash far past mountains, goin’ away. It fade. Thunder beat sky but goin’ away. It go ‘cross valley and roll heavy down canyon. It fade to quietness.
“Like spirit, like clean window, Et’wi, White Eagle, land in door. It fold wings look side to side. It look all ‘round but not look at me. Et’wi have yellow eyes, black in middle, and yellow feet. Rest look white eagle but small, black feather over each eye. Claws make scrape and thud when grab board on porch.
‘It say nothing, just look but not at me. Then turn, look over left shoulder. With move it in air, glide ‘cross valley. Like thunder, lightening, it fade, leave no shadow. It glide up, over mountain in west, just like thunder, lightening, vanish.
‘Then I know I not be Medicine Man, not have “power.” Rejected. Power no want me. I no have strength overcome it.”
I do not remember breathing through his entire story. After a long silence we made fresh coffee and small talked. He got the boys more cookies and milk. When we finished our refreshments we left Grampa for our little home in the solitude of the Great Canyon, there on the eastern end under the Hat Creek Rim.
Grampa left many stories with me, some that I am recording for my children so they will somehow know the strength and conviction it takes to become a person-of-power, a Medicine Man. Then, perhaps, they will not flit across earth taking titles like “Pipe Carrier.” “Road Man,” “Medicine Man,” from people who have no authority to issue them. “Power” and “Medicine” are not elements of life issued by people. They are pure parts to the Great Wonders that must be earned, deserved, maintained, and something one was born to receive.
During the full moon of October, 1984, Grampa left us. Like Et’wi, his spirit floated over the valley leaving no shadow. It glided up over the western range, climbing with the wind whispering under its power, and vanished. Our little world seemed empty, again. We wept.
* Damaa’gomis and Dini’howes are spirit/power helpers. It is said the life spirit of the male being is weak without one or the other.
Friday, October 31, 2008
One Dream
03-20-08
ONE DREAM
Should I live for another ten years I will feel very fortunate, but it was not long ago, at the time of European intrusion into this hemisphere, that indigenous upon this entire continent lived a balanced life for 300 snows or more. I was born on the northern half of this western hemisphere. At that time the Elders among us were few and scattered. The diaspora and genocide of indigenous that began at first contact with evil assault tactics birthed upon the European continent and transported here, continues in the year 2008 and there is no solution upon the political horizon that will allow this thought to recede, fade, or vanish: Divide and Conquer. This tactic promoted the invasion and assault of the world, by various Kingdoms demanding gold. In the instance of the initial invaders assaulting this hemisphere, gold in sufficient amounts that would allow the Spanish Crown to purchase an army. That activity of “finding” this hemisphere was first an accident, then grew to become a discovery and land-claim, then was fed to Historians by the crowns to manipulate history to continue the justification of The Doctrine of Discovery and right to destroy humanity while seizing land.
When I was in grade one, beginning my academic journey, I explained to my Elders how Columbus “found” us. A Grandmother looked long at me then asked. “Did this person find the sun, too? This land was never ‘lost’ any more than the sun was lost.”
Should one explore “discovery” and “doctrine” in a worthy dictionary and with a clear mind, s/he will find that the Doctrine of Discovery means that two people can happen upon anything and the first who claims to see it first is the discoverer. In the instance of the western hemisphere, the “discovery was a vast land-area inhabited by 100-million indigenous beings. For the “doctrine” to bear legitimate fruit, one must assume that the 100- millions of indigenous inhabitants upon this western continent were blind! One “civilized” way to fortify this societal myopia is to change the languages of the indigenous and distort their habits and world-views through the process of assimilation/acculturation, an alteration that damages indigenous much is the political strategy of changing our languages and encouraging us to identify a language other than the one we were colonized with as “foreign.”
The history of the penetration of pirates from the European continent, written by the assaulting forces, is accepted by too many history scholars, both foreign and indigenous. That poorly reported and often fabricated chronicle must be questioned, particularly its divide-and-maintain-control mentality that pits languages and cultures against each other in the indigenous arena while dividing families at their spiritual roots.
There are strange, intruding language-forces yet dominating this hemisphere and the indigenous upon this hemisphere, causing one indigenous camp to look askance at the other. The strange languages are English and Spanish. The arrogance of the English language reinforced by the presence of God, and the power of the Spanish language reinforced with the strength of the Catholic Church, are formidable structures to confront, causing an immense division among the indigenous. By employing this strange formula, the English-speaking native and the Spanish speaking native often hold each suspect of being foreign! An English colonized English-speaking native from the north will hold the Spanish colonized Spanish-speaking native from the south in the “foreign” arena even though the Spanish speaking native is a full-blood-native Spanish-speaker and is to a greater degree original native than the English-speaker making the crude and hasty judgment.
This confusion is accomplished by distorting the native languages and world-views. This distortion is accomplished to promote and protect the assumption of “truths” residing in the act of assimilation, and to invite indigenous loyalty to strange beings and their strange habits, actions that continue to erode the gentle spirit among indigenous peoples everywhere. Those invading and foreign habits devoid of protection and promotion would, like an autumn leaf, dry and fall from the present to be raked and discarded in the abyss of uselessness.
Our ancient ancestors that learned from their ancient ancestors who studied this hemisphere and cherished the life-forces said, “Hamis hidatsi (One heart), hamis Aw’te (one people), hamis himal (one mind), hamis ahti (one blood), hamis telamji (one spirit), hamis tasoqjami (one dream), from tip to tip” (meaning, from the tip of South America to the North Pole). In order for the indigenous inhabitants of this western hemisphere to appreciate the boundless love of our ancient beings and conduct our lives and its purposes issued to us as an undamaged dream, this generation must lift the curtain of prejudice smothering our instincts, cast it off, and follow the foot steps of our ancestors, for that path leads to the dawning of our respect and responsibilities as original indigenous dwelling upon this earth. Too, that path will reveal the necessity of our understanding. It is a good path. This path awaits our happy laughter, our delicate songs, our dedicated dances. Hayyaw, (younger brother) Enunja (little sister) it is a dream of Pukemuka (wonderful wise people of our history), therefore it is tijtawa (genuine).
Gedn’ch’lumnu (This must be so).
Sul’ma’ejote
ONE DREAM
Should I live for another ten years I will feel very fortunate, but it was not long ago, at the time of European intrusion into this hemisphere, that indigenous upon this entire continent lived a balanced life for 300 snows or more. I was born on the northern half of this western hemisphere. At that time the Elders among us were few and scattered. The diaspora and genocide of indigenous that began at first contact with evil assault tactics birthed upon the European continent and transported here, continues in the year 2008 and there is no solution upon the political horizon that will allow this thought to recede, fade, or vanish: Divide and Conquer. This tactic promoted the invasion and assault of the world, by various Kingdoms demanding gold. In the instance of the initial invaders assaulting this hemisphere, gold in sufficient amounts that would allow the Spanish Crown to purchase an army. That activity of “finding” this hemisphere was first an accident, then grew to become a discovery and land-claim, then was fed to Historians by the crowns to manipulate history to continue the justification of The Doctrine of Discovery and right to destroy humanity while seizing land.
When I was in grade one, beginning my academic journey, I explained to my Elders how Columbus “found” us. A Grandmother looked long at me then asked. “Did this person find the sun, too? This land was never ‘lost’ any more than the sun was lost.”
Should one explore “discovery” and “doctrine” in a worthy dictionary and with a clear mind, s/he will find that the Doctrine of Discovery means that two people can happen upon anything and the first who claims to see it first is the discoverer. In the instance of the western hemisphere, the “discovery was a vast land-area inhabited by 100-million indigenous beings. For the “doctrine” to bear legitimate fruit, one must assume that the 100- millions of indigenous inhabitants upon this western continent were blind! One “civilized” way to fortify this societal myopia is to change the languages of the indigenous and distort their habits and world-views through the process of assimilation/acculturation, an alteration that damages indigenous much is the political strategy of changing our languages and encouraging us to identify a language other than the one we were colonized with as “foreign.”
The history of the penetration of pirates from the European continent, written by the assaulting forces, is accepted by too many history scholars, both foreign and indigenous. That poorly reported and often fabricated chronicle must be questioned, particularly its divide-and-maintain-control mentality that pits languages and cultures against each other in the indigenous arena while dividing families at their spiritual roots.
There are strange, intruding language-forces yet dominating this hemisphere and the indigenous upon this hemisphere, causing one indigenous camp to look askance at the other. The strange languages are English and Spanish. The arrogance of the English language reinforced by the presence of God, and the power of the Spanish language reinforced with the strength of the Catholic Church, are formidable structures to confront, causing an immense division among the indigenous. By employing this strange formula, the English-speaking native and the Spanish speaking native often hold each suspect of being foreign! An English colonized English-speaking native from the north will hold the Spanish colonized Spanish-speaking native from the south in the “foreign” arena even though the Spanish speaking native is a full-blood-native Spanish-speaker and is to a greater degree original native than the English-speaker making the crude and hasty judgment.
This confusion is accomplished by distorting the native languages and world-views. This distortion is accomplished to promote and protect the assumption of “truths” residing in the act of assimilation, and to invite indigenous loyalty to strange beings and their strange habits, actions that continue to erode the gentle spirit among indigenous peoples everywhere. Those invading and foreign habits devoid of protection and promotion would, like an autumn leaf, dry and fall from the present to be raked and discarded in the abyss of uselessness.
Our ancient ancestors that learned from their ancient ancestors who studied this hemisphere and cherished the life-forces said, “Hamis hidatsi (One heart), hamis Aw’te (one people), hamis himal (one mind), hamis ahti (one blood), hamis telamji (one spirit), hamis tasoqjami (one dream), from tip to tip” (meaning, from the tip of South America to the North Pole). In order for the indigenous inhabitants of this western hemisphere to appreciate the boundless love of our ancient beings and conduct our lives and its purposes issued to us as an undamaged dream, this generation must lift the curtain of prejudice smothering our instincts, cast it off, and follow the foot steps of our ancestors, for that path leads to the dawning of our respect and responsibilities as original indigenous dwelling upon this earth. Too, that path will reveal the necessity of our understanding. It is a good path. This path awaits our happy laughter, our delicate songs, our dedicated dances. Hayyaw, (younger brother) Enunja (little sister) it is a dream of Pukemuka (wonderful wise people of our history), therefore it is tijtawa (genuine).
Gedn’ch’lumnu (This must be so).
Sul’ma’ejote
Monday, October 27, 2008
THE GOD WHO CANNOT SMILE
February 14, 1991, 8:11 am, UC, Davis
THE GOD WHO CANNOT SMILE
(A view of a 20th century indigenous person from the shore of this hemisphere to Castile and the Mayflower.)
The news spread quickly across the land. It was whispered in the mountains and in the vast valleys that there might be a fulfilling of the legend concerning Quetzalcoatl, that it appeared he returned from the Morning Star. It is said he promised to return with a vengeance when he was thrust from his homeland, a land which lies to the south and on the sunrise side of the world.
We were certain that the son of Morning Star had returned. We learned that he and his tribe entered the land with much anger and longed to destroy those that had put him out of his position as Cacique. The message came from the south and from the east, as the Mohawk and the Seminole knew of the legend for many seasons, and they, too, waited and wondered.
It is known that Quetzalcoatl was thrust from his domain because he was an honored Cacique and he worked the earth with his people. He gave new methods of growing corn and devised plans for growing cotton of many colors so staining cloth was no longer necessary. With his dreams he created methods of watering the earth and he helped the people grow food and fruit where there was once only a harsh landscape.
Quetzalcoatl taught the people to be good and share the bounty of earth. He said that the bounty of earth belonged to all of the people all of the time and children should be served first at the feast, then the Elders, then the people. He said that this is the manner of survival of the most precious and fragile of our life’s ingredients, the children. The children must eat first because of their youth, the Elders second because of their wisdom and their ability to teach children, and the people that are not yet wise but distant from being a child third, because labor was their love and to feed the children and Elders their honor. Together the people worked the earth and sang songs to the rising sun and to the vastness of the universe, and to all creatures dwelling upon earth and among the stars.
When the Kings and those of great power and jealousy ran Quetzalcoatl out of the land with much anger (because the people truly loved him) he vowed to return with thunder and lightning to re-claim his just position among the people. The lessons say that if he returned on one-deer* he would strike the children, if on one-jaguar,* he would strike all of the people, whomsoever; if on one-reed,* he would strike only Kings. It was during the season of one-reed when destruction came to the land.
Kings trembled.
That is how the lesson came to my people dwelling upon the western edge of our world near thundering waters of outer-ocean. Our creation is beside the crashing, hurrying mountain river and under a canopy of dancing stars where the unknowable dwells forever.
We know they came from the direction of the rising sun and Morning Star. But we also know that they are not Quetzalcoatl. We know they did not return to claim a just seat among the people and within our governing body. We know they do not have the power to love earth and to sing songs at dawn when bright stars look across forever smiling, as the new day is yet a silver-green veil in the east.
They landed in the south on the sunrise side of our world and destroyed the pueblos and the temples and assaulted the pyramids, our dream honoring the Great Powers dwelling within the universe. Their commander was invisible. Their commander gave them orders to destroy our people and to take possession of all our lives. Their commander bade them to take our homeland for a King and Queen dwelling in a distant land. Their God was angry with our people, commanding armies to slaughter us, it is said, in order to save us.
It would be many seasons before we understood their pain and learned more about their angry God. Kings trembled, and those honoring the fierce Kings.
It was not the passing of many seasons when we earned of another entry of strange beings into our homeland. Again we wondered. They entered upon the eastern shore of the great salt waters where the nations of Narragansett roamed in vast numbers under the summer sun, dancing with the beating of their great hearts in a vast circle, singing.
The strangers, too, had an angry invisible God to lead them and to command them. Their God was ferocious and had no tolerance for my people. They, too, came with dreams of destruction and they, too, appeared to have no honor for earth and the knowledge of earth within their being. God told them we had no soul, therefore, it was not only reasonable to destroy us, but by destroying us they would find great glory within His Kingdom.
Their God gave them our homeland and none of our chiefs can remember the season when their God petitioned the council asking for it so He could give it away. But God took it and gave it to strangers who walk upon the earth in anger, feast in anger, think in anger, dream in anger. We wondered and worried long about this God.
What was this two-footer who entered out homeland led by a strange God? What is this God who takes from our people and condemns us as if we had no purpose in dwelling upon earth and singing songs to all of life? What is God doing here? How long will He linger?
All of these questions were before our council gathered at the evening fire. Many council fires burned through the night. The answer refused to appear. The answer, too, was invisible.
We learned to read the speaking leaf and here is what earth children have discovered. It is said there have always been many invisible Gods governing the people dwelling in the lands beyond the salt waters. It is written that all of their Gods are jealous. In anger their God cast them to the winter wind. In anger their God forced them from their homeland. In glorified anger their Gods led them to “promised lands.”
In anger their God wrote laws upon stone for them to abide by. In anger their God pardoned them for bearing many diseases and much sickness to our shores. In anger their Gods crush other nations in order to plant his chosen people upon lands that are precious and sacred to original nations of the world. In anger their God intruded into the lives of many people and bid his flock to follow- seeking neither permission to enter nor pardon for the intrusion.
In anger their God battled with Satan and with other Gods that created war upon war, pit nation against nation, moved tribe against tribe and brother against sister. And when the conflicts were over it was impossible to identify that which was truly of a Satanic nature and that which was truly Godly. The native people of this world have not been able to discern between them. This is what the speaking leaf told us. Charlot of the Flatheads spoke to the council saying.
The speaking page taught us that the wanderings of God were always met with conflict and confrontation. It said long ago His children were ejected from their homeland and God led them through the wilderness. He parted bodies of water so His people might pass through, walking upon earth, as they searched for peace and happiness – and land.
God commanded the people without uttering a sound. And that which worried our Council of Elders most was that God stood far away from the people, dwelling and watching from a distant, invisible place, heaven. Their God was not within their being, not protecting their spirit, not encompassing their purpose, but watched their movements to see if they dared to put another God first. He watched, always alert, always prepared to strike the “flock.”
Yes, they feared God!
Their God thundered unto them that He would condemn them for all seasons if they failed to obey His wishes. Their God told them that the native people were not real, but were cannibals and savages, that we were less than animals; that we dwelled in a world that we knew not how to manage, and that we had no connection between our spirits and the power that turns earth around the sun and sun around a greater wonder still. His word condemned the native people to death.
After being cast from their homeland, those thinking themselves as “pure,” gathered at Scrooby, which is a dwelling place in eastern lands. Soon they were cast from Scrooby and, after a long wandering, the God-people cast their covetous eyes to the shores of my people, the earth of our dreams, the world of our visions. Their God, as had the God of other “children,” promised them land. He did not ask our nations if he and his children could penetrate our domain. He failed to seek permission to enter. He, instead, trespassed into the world of the native nations and issued to his children a right to occupancy and ownership.
They came with their Book-of-One-Great-Law in one diseased hand and disease and guns in the other. From the floating long house called The Flower of Spring, it is said, they entered the land of the Narraganset, the Wampanoag, the Mashpee near the dancing waters called Nantuckett. There the natives fed them. There also, our spirits touched many diseases and much sickness.
In the season of falling leaves they arrived upon the sunrise side of our world. Our people became sick. Many nations perished, many children also. They said they were pure like snow, but upon close examination by our Chiefs and our Councils, we learned that they were diseased and unclean.
Their Chiefs also said they were pure. Chief spoke to the pure saying they must bind together as but a single being, and their bindings must be their love for God and for each other. In this manner they would prosper.
In this manner, their Chief said they would grow to be many upon the land. He spoke saying they would build a shining village upon the hills and their light would never, as the evening sun, fade into shadows. God commanded their Chief and the pure followed every word
They saw this land as a beautiful place created for them alone by their God, but they were not created here, nor was their God. Our Council spoke saying that this cannot be so. The Council said they were intruding and wished for them to go, but they lingered.
And they multiplied. It has been the passing of many winters as there are fingers of many hands. They grew into many people upon our land, more than the leaves of the forest. It is true they have a good life issued to them by their invisible, angry God. It is true they have built many shining villages, one upon every hill they approached.
But there is a truth spoken at the council fire in the purple softness of evening. Our Chief said:
“It is true the eastern people have grown to be many. It is true they have much land and many possessions. It is true they have made huge laws. It is true they have made shining villages upon the thousand hills. But they still do not have happiness. They shall never find happiness for all of the seasons they worship The-God-Who-Cannot-Smile.”
Sul’ma’ejote
THE GOD WHO CANNOT SMILE
(A view of a 20th century indigenous person from the shore of this hemisphere to Castile and the Mayflower.)
The news spread quickly across the land. It was whispered in the mountains and in the vast valleys that there might be a fulfilling of the legend concerning Quetzalcoatl, that it appeared he returned from the Morning Star. It is said he promised to return with a vengeance when he was thrust from his homeland, a land which lies to the south and on the sunrise side of the world.
We were certain that the son of Morning Star had returned. We learned that he and his tribe entered the land with much anger and longed to destroy those that had put him out of his position as Cacique. The message came from the south and from the east, as the Mohawk and the Seminole knew of the legend for many seasons, and they, too, waited and wondered.
It is known that Quetzalcoatl was thrust from his domain because he was an honored Cacique and he worked the earth with his people. He gave new methods of growing corn and devised plans for growing cotton of many colors so staining cloth was no longer necessary. With his dreams he created methods of watering the earth and he helped the people grow food and fruit where there was once only a harsh landscape.
Quetzalcoatl taught the people to be good and share the bounty of earth. He said that the bounty of earth belonged to all of the people all of the time and children should be served first at the feast, then the Elders, then the people. He said that this is the manner of survival of the most precious and fragile of our life’s ingredients, the children. The children must eat first because of their youth, the Elders second because of their wisdom and their ability to teach children, and the people that are not yet wise but distant from being a child third, because labor was their love and to feed the children and Elders their honor. Together the people worked the earth and sang songs to the rising sun and to the vastness of the universe, and to all creatures dwelling upon earth and among the stars.
When the Kings and those of great power and jealousy ran Quetzalcoatl out of the land with much anger (because the people truly loved him) he vowed to return with thunder and lightning to re-claim his just position among the people. The lessons say that if he returned on one-deer* he would strike the children, if on one-jaguar,* he would strike all of the people, whomsoever; if on one-reed,* he would strike only Kings. It was during the season of one-reed when destruction came to the land.
Kings trembled.
That is how the lesson came to my people dwelling upon the western edge of our world near thundering waters of outer-ocean. Our creation is beside the crashing, hurrying mountain river and under a canopy of dancing stars where the unknowable dwells forever.
We know they came from the direction of the rising sun and Morning Star. But we also know that they are not Quetzalcoatl. We know they did not return to claim a just seat among the people and within our governing body. We know they do not have the power to love earth and to sing songs at dawn when bright stars look across forever smiling, as the new day is yet a silver-green veil in the east.
They landed in the south on the sunrise side of our world and destroyed the pueblos and the temples and assaulted the pyramids, our dream honoring the Great Powers dwelling within the universe. Their commander was invisible. Their commander gave them orders to destroy our people and to take possession of all our lives. Their commander bade them to take our homeland for a King and Queen dwelling in a distant land. Their God was angry with our people, commanding armies to slaughter us, it is said, in order to save us.
It would be many seasons before we understood their pain and learned more about their angry God. Kings trembled, and those honoring the fierce Kings.
It was not the passing of many seasons when we earned of another entry of strange beings into our homeland. Again we wondered. They entered upon the eastern shore of the great salt waters where the nations of Narragansett roamed in vast numbers under the summer sun, dancing with the beating of their great hearts in a vast circle, singing.
The strangers, too, had an angry invisible God to lead them and to command them. Their God was ferocious and had no tolerance for my people. They, too, came with dreams of destruction and they, too, appeared to have no honor for earth and the knowledge of earth within their being. God told them we had no soul, therefore, it was not only reasonable to destroy us, but by destroying us they would find great glory within His Kingdom.
Their God gave them our homeland and none of our chiefs can remember the season when their God petitioned the council asking for it so He could give it away. But God took it and gave it to strangers who walk upon the earth in anger, feast in anger, think in anger, dream in anger. We wondered and worried long about this God.
What was this two-footer who entered out homeland led by a strange God? What is this God who takes from our people and condemns us as if we had no purpose in dwelling upon earth and singing songs to all of life? What is God doing here? How long will He linger?
All of these questions were before our council gathered at the evening fire. Many council fires burned through the night. The answer refused to appear. The answer, too, was invisible.
We learned to read the speaking leaf and here is what earth children have discovered. It is said there have always been many invisible Gods governing the people dwelling in the lands beyond the salt waters. It is written that all of their Gods are jealous. In anger their God cast them to the winter wind. In anger their God forced them from their homeland. In glorified anger their Gods led them to “promised lands.”
In anger their God wrote laws upon stone for them to abide by. In anger their God pardoned them for bearing many diseases and much sickness to our shores. In anger their Gods crush other nations in order to plant his chosen people upon lands that are precious and sacred to original nations of the world. In anger their God intruded into the lives of many people and bid his flock to follow- seeking neither permission to enter nor pardon for the intrusion.
In anger their God battled with Satan and with other Gods that created war upon war, pit nation against nation, moved tribe against tribe and brother against sister. And when the conflicts were over it was impossible to identify that which was truly of a Satanic nature and that which was truly Godly. The native people of this world have not been able to discern between them. This is what the speaking leaf told us. Charlot of the Flatheads spoke to the council saying.
“We were happy when he first came. We first thought he came from the light; but he comes like the dusk of evening, not the dawn of morning. He comes like a day that has passed and night enters the future with him.”
The speaking page taught us that the wanderings of God were always met with conflict and confrontation. It said long ago His children were ejected from their homeland and God led them through the wilderness. He parted bodies of water so His people might pass through, walking upon earth, as they searched for peace and happiness – and land.
God commanded the people without uttering a sound. And that which worried our Council of Elders most was that God stood far away from the people, dwelling and watching from a distant, invisible place, heaven. Their God was not within their being, not protecting their spirit, not encompassing their purpose, but watched their movements to see if they dared to put another God first. He watched, always alert, always prepared to strike the “flock.”
Yes, they feared God!
Their God thundered unto them that He would condemn them for all seasons if they failed to obey His wishes. Their God told them that the native people were not real, but were cannibals and savages, that we were less than animals; that we dwelled in a world that we knew not how to manage, and that we had no connection between our spirits and the power that turns earth around the sun and sun around a greater wonder still. His word condemned the native people to death.
After being cast from their homeland, those thinking themselves as “pure,” gathered at Scrooby, which is a dwelling place in eastern lands. Soon they were cast from Scrooby and, after a long wandering, the God-people cast their covetous eyes to the shores of my people, the earth of our dreams, the world of our visions. Their God, as had the God of other “children,” promised them land. He did not ask our nations if he and his children could penetrate our domain. He failed to seek permission to enter. He, instead, trespassed into the world of the native nations and issued to his children a right to occupancy and ownership.
They came with their Book-of-One-Great-Law in one diseased hand and disease and guns in the other. From the floating long house called The Flower of Spring, it is said, they entered the land of the Narraganset, the Wampanoag, the Mashpee near the dancing waters called Nantuckett. There the natives fed them. There also, our spirits touched many diseases and much sickness.
In the season of falling leaves they arrived upon the sunrise side of our world. Our people became sick. Many nations perished, many children also. They said they were pure like snow, but upon close examination by our Chiefs and our Councils, we learned that they were diseased and unclean.
Their Chiefs also said they were pure. Chief spoke to the pure saying they must bind together as but a single being, and their bindings must be their love for God and for each other. In this manner they would prosper.
In this manner, their Chief said they would grow to be many upon the land. He spoke saying they would build a shining village upon the hills and their light would never, as the evening sun, fade into shadows. God commanded their Chief and the pure followed every word
They saw this land as a beautiful place created for them alone by their God, but they were not created here, nor was their God. Our Council spoke saying that this cannot be so. The Council said they were intruding and wished for them to go, but they lingered.
And they multiplied. It has been the passing of many winters as there are fingers of many hands. They grew into many people upon our land, more than the leaves of the forest. It is true they have a good life issued to them by their invisible, angry God. It is true they have built many shining villages, one upon every hill they approached.
But there is a truth spoken at the council fire in the purple softness of evening. Our Chief said:
“It is true the eastern people have grown to be many. It is true they have much land and many possessions. It is true they have made huge laws. It is true they have made shining villages upon the thousand hills. But they still do not have happiness. They shall never find happiness for all of the seasons they worship The-God-Who-Cannot-Smile.”
Sul’ma’ejote
Trees of Peace
Summer (June), 1972
United Nations Conference on Human Environment,
Stockholm (Skarpnak), Sweden
THE TREES OF PEACE
O’Stockholm I dreamed long of you
Dwelling beside the laughing waters
O’ Scandinavia, the land of my fairytales
Scandinavia! The land that captured my thoughts long ago.
As I dreamed,
you have children of mettle dwelling among you
I know because I have seen it in youe eyes,
the fire living in your hearts
But for many days the mannequin spoke
more often to my ears than did the people
And many days the mannequin listened
to the message I brought to these shores
Often the mannequin looked with happy eyes upon the world
and that happiness as not in the eyes of the people
It is a sad thing to see empty eyes
It is a sad thing to see eyes not shining
for the heart cannot be smiling if the eyes do not shine
Stockholm, I spoke to one of your children of this emptiness
“Why is it the people of this land appear to be unhappy
their eyes do not shine
their hearts do not dance
they do not smile?”
“They are wrapped in a blanket,
a blanket of security,
That is why they do not smile”
“Who wrapped them in this blanket?”
“The state
the state and the city”
“Then the people are not wrapped, they are robbed!
There has been a crime committed against them, a theft!”
As the few stars looked through the dark sky
I thought long of the words
And looked again into the eyes of Stockholm
And looked again into the eyes of the mannequin
It is true
Many of you have been robbed
A crime has been committed against you
I fasted, praying there would come
a person with sparkling eyes and lively smile
with fire in the heart
and leaping and dancing in the eyes
This much I found in Finland
and I found so much more in Denmark
then I found it in Stockholm
My heart danced
because it takes but one person
with fire to complete the Great Circle
that holds the world
You are now in the circle, Stockholm
and you need not fear
Smile upon your neighbors and upon all children
Look with the eyes of your heart
and you will find a world of miracles
and you can begin building rainbows
A rainbow
Of truth
Of revolution
Of freedom
Of knowledge
Of faith
For this is the circular path of peace
And we must make it larger
If you cannot walk the great circle, then dance
If you cannot dance the great circle, then sing
You can
if your heart is pure
think of the great circle
and by thinking you become part of the great rainbow
and you become a part of the sun
and a part of the darkness
and a part of the thousand suns and the thousand universes
And to remind you of the beauty of the circle
so you will never forget
that the spirits directed us to this land with a mission
we have been instructed to leave you some life,
life and plans for living
You will never forget the four directions
You will never forget the four seasons
this is a beautiful thing to remember
for they are the heart-beat of the Great Circle
At Vadisluden (a public park in Stockholm)
we plant four trees
One for freedom
because people must change the heart-beat
of the world so it is a good thing
and this must not be done with trembling,
and do not be afraid to say, “Revolution!”
One for knowledge and wisdom
given by our elders
and you will know where this comes from
and you will go and get it for your children
One for faith
so you will have faith in freedom
and understanding
and in revolution
One for truth, and silence and loneliness and hunger
so you will never walk alone
and you will forever hunger for knowledge
and in silence you will find truth and trust
Silence is the language spoken at the Great Council
as we sit in a circle
around a fire larger than the sun
This is what we leave you with
In our giving
we also receive a great goodness
of silence and of sunshine
Stockholm, long is our journey to our homeland
across the great salt waters
We must go
As we go we walk softly upon Mother Earth
we ask that you do this forever also
Our hearts smile that we do not leave you
Alone.
Sul’ma’ejote
United Nations Conference on Human Environment,
Stockholm (Skarpnak), Sweden
THE TREES OF PEACE
O’Stockholm I dreamed long of you
Dwelling beside the laughing waters
O’ Scandinavia, the land of my fairytales
Scandinavia! The land that captured my thoughts long ago.
As I dreamed,
you have children of mettle dwelling among you
I know because I have seen it in youe eyes,
the fire living in your hearts
But for many days the mannequin spoke
more often to my ears than did the people
And many days the mannequin listened
to the message I brought to these shores
Often the mannequin looked with happy eyes upon the world
and that happiness as not in the eyes of the people
It is a sad thing to see empty eyes
It is a sad thing to see eyes not shining
for the heart cannot be smiling if the eyes do not shine
Stockholm, I spoke to one of your children of this emptiness
“Why is it the people of this land appear to be unhappy
their eyes do not shine
their hearts do not dance
they do not smile?”
“They are wrapped in a blanket,
a blanket of security,
That is why they do not smile”
“Who wrapped them in this blanket?”
“The state
the state and the city”
“Then the people are not wrapped, they are robbed!
There has been a crime committed against them, a theft!”
As the few stars looked through the dark sky
I thought long of the words
And looked again into the eyes of Stockholm
And looked again into the eyes of the mannequin
It is true
Many of you have been robbed
A crime has been committed against you
I fasted, praying there would come
a person with sparkling eyes and lively smile
with fire in the heart
and leaping and dancing in the eyes
This much I found in Finland
and I found so much more in Denmark
then I found it in Stockholm
My heart danced
because it takes but one person
with fire to complete the Great Circle
that holds the world
You are now in the circle, Stockholm
and you need not fear
Smile upon your neighbors and upon all children
Look with the eyes of your heart
and you will find a world of miracles
and you can begin building rainbows
A rainbow
Of truth
Of revolution
Of freedom
Of knowledge
Of faith
For this is the circular path of peace
And we must make it larger
If you cannot walk the great circle, then dance
If you cannot dance the great circle, then sing
You can
if your heart is pure
think of the great circle
and by thinking you become part of the great rainbow
and you become a part of the sun
and a part of the darkness
and a part of the thousand suns and the thousand universes
And to remind you of the beauty of the circle
so you will never forget
that the spirits directed us to this land with a mission
we have been instructed to leave you some life,
life and plans for living
You will never forget the four directions
You will never forget the four seasons
this is a beautiful thing to remember
for they are the heart-beat of the Great Circle
At Vadisluden (a public park in Stockholm)
we plant four trees
One for freedom
because people must change the heart-beat
of the world so it is a good thing
and this must not be done with trembling,
and do not be afraid to say, “Revolution!”
One for knowledge and wisdom
given by our elders
and you will know where this comes from
and you will go and get it for your children
One for faith
so you will have faith in freedom
and understanding
and in revolution
One for truth, and silence and loneliness and hunger
so you will never walk alone
and you will forever hunger for knowledge
and in silence you will find truth and trust
Silence is the language spoken at the Great Council
as we sit in a circle
around a fire larger than the sun
This is what we leave you with
In our giving
we also receive a great goodness
of silence and of sunshine
Stockholm, long is our journey to our homeland
across the great salt waters
We must go
As we go we walk softly upon Mother Earth
we ask that you do this forever also
Our hearts smile that we do not leave you
Alone.
Sul’ma’ejote
Machu Picchu
October 22, 2008, San Jose, CA
A LETTER TO “BABY” FROM AKON (Grampa).
[Cuauhxihuitl’s journey. End of June 08, lv: San Jose, destination, MachuPicchu, Peru. Oct 23, 08, nearing Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Goal: To become a better person. Soon home in San Jose]
Sweet little Blue Eagle, greetings,
I have just reread your latest blog and my spirit is full of a sweet expectation that awaits you at Cusco and Machu Picchu. Akon’s old and weak heart is strengthened by your accomplishments and longs to dance in the plaza at Machu Picchu with yours, for I know that you dance for each of us, even as you dream for us all.
Soon this part of your life’s journey will come to a close but many other challenges will automatically open to and for you. Your journey, while unimportant to Science and “progress,” are an immense contribution to the indigenous experience upon this hemisphere, for you have moved the northern and southern hemispheres closer, weakening imitation boundaries that have, for too long, been erected by foreigners to keep us apart and vulnerable. That you respond to the ancient voices that call you will never be a part of Science or History, but they should be, because, in the final analysis, those precious people who have been placed upon your path at the precise moment to cause your journey to be a continual fulfillment of your deeper purpose, guide you for each of us, also.
There is much we cannot know and there is so much you must cause us to remember about our places in the universe and our responsibility to Mother Earth, for we will all be healthier and more everlasting because of it. And one day those reading this letter may see the seeds of our future being planted by you and cultivated by the Great Universal Powers and at the maturing of that planting, find a tender, wholesome harvest. Following your example, one day earth’s children will sing a love song to Mother Earth. The universe will respond to their love, Juyjowa (badness) will vanish, and Earth’s sweet powers will continue.
Soon I will hold you, see love dancing in your eyes, and feel the power that surges through you that has earth’s children as its intention, and it will be so good.
The butterflies in the meadow will chorus to your accomplishments, the bees will make sweeter honey and the blossoms will produce a bounty for the earth’s children. Eagles will sing with the fluffy clouds, the fawn will dance while drinking from the fresh water mountain spring, salmon will glisten all of the colors of a rainbow, and earth’s children will pray at dawn with open hearts, weeping.
For now, enter Cusco and Machu Picchu as our Ambassador, and as our Princess, for the great mountain and the stones of the temple have waited long for your appearance. Then hurry home for it has been too long, too, since you walked with us and from here, smiled upon the dawn and the sunrise. Akon
A LETTER TO “BABY” FROM AKON (Grampa).
[Cuauhxihuitl’s journey. End of June 08, lv: San Jose, destination, MachuPicchu, Peru. Oct 23, 08, nearing Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Goal: To become a better person. Soon home in San Jose]
Sweet little Blue Eagle, greetings,
I have just reread your latest blog and my spirit is full of a sweet expectation that awaits you at Cusco and Machu Picchu. Akon’s old and weak heart is strengthened by your accomplishments and longs to dance in the plaza at Machu Picchu with yours, for I know that you dance for each of us, even as you dream for us all.
Soon this part of your life’s journey will come to a close but many other challenges will automatically open to and for you. Your journey, while unimportant to Science and “progress,” are an immense contribution to the indigenous experience upon this hemisphere, for you have moved the northern and southern hemispheres closer, weakening imitation boundaries that have, for too long, been erected by foreigners to keep us apart and vulnerable. That you respond to the ancient voices that call you will never be a part of Science or History, but they should be, because, in the final analysis, those precious people who have been placed upon your path at the precise moment to cause your journey to be a continual fulfillment of your deeper purpose, guide you for each of us, also.
There is much we cannot know and there is so much you must cause us to remember about our places in the universe and our responsibility to Mother Earth, for we will all be healthier and more everlasting because of it. And one day those reading this letter may see the seeds of our future being planted by you and cultivated by the Great Universal Powers and at the maturing of that planting, find a tender, wholesome harvest. Following your example, one day earth’s children will sing a love song to Mother Earth. The universe will respond to their love, Juyjowa (badness) will vanish, and Earth’s sweet powers will continue.
Soon I will hold you, see love dancing in your eyes, and feel the power that surges through you that has earth’s children as its intention, and it will be so good.
The butterflies in the meadow will chorus to your accomplishments, the bees will make sweeter honey and the blossoms will produce a bounty for the earth’s children. Eagles will sing with the fluffy clouds, the fawn will dance while drinking from the fresh water mountain spring, salmon will glisten all of the colors of a rainbow, and earth’s children will pray at dawn with open hearts, weeping.
For now, enter Cusco and Machu Picchu as our Ambassador, and as our Princess, for the great mountain and the stones of the temple have waited long for your appearance. Then hurry home for it has been too long, too, since you walked with us and from here, smiled upon the dawn and the sunrise. Akon
WITH COLUMBUS’ PENETRATION, MANY THINGS HAVE CHANGED
WITH COLUMBUS’ PENETRATION, MANY THINGS HAVE CHANGED
It was the season of Apnui (flowered Summer), 516 years after Columbus’ crude penetration into this hemisphere. Sun seemed happy talking with a pleasant and endless powder-blue sky. Soft breaths of wind stirred small ripples across the mirror-surface of the vast and powerful ocean, seeming to slumber in the warmth of the day. It was a pot-luck early dinner encouraged into being by members of the Santa Cruz Indian Council.
It is true. We had clam chowder when we should have had fresh abalone and mussels.
It is true we had contemporary salad when we should have had
seaweed, dandelions and the stomach contents from a freshly taken deer.
It is true we had mashed potatoes when we should have had crushed, boiled seeds from a thousand different abundant plants from the thousand hills.
It is true we had fried chicken when we should have had roasted turtle.
It is true that we had bottled water from the nearby grocery store instead of a basket of water from the nearby fresh-water spring.
It is true that we had cookies and pie instead of a basket of honey we dipped with two fingers, moving it quickly to our mouths like thin, delicious poi.
It seems that our entire diets have been drastically changed because of the great wisdoms found in “civilization.” And in the civilization of the water and the landscape. The vast ocean has been polluted with much waste and today a cautious mother will not allow her children to bathe there, or even wade. The fresh-water springs from earth are damaged and dried up. The ocean is stripped of abalone and the ocean floor is raked clean of clams, shrimp and other creatures out of ecological balance. Turtles no longer lay eggs for their generations to continue. The seaweed is more polluted than the ocean. The variety of seeds upon the many hills atrophy because the air is polluted and often the rain, too. It is difficult to locate real honey nowadays, but every grocery store has an endless variety of “cultured” honey that is not created from flower nectars but from bees in captivity with only sugar-water to knead their honey from.
So many things have changed since the European violation of the western hemisphere, too many to list or remember.
But there was something at that little dinner on the beach that is neither rare nor
atrophying, love. The love between a variety of earth’s people, and the love of our breaths to freely partake of and share the sweetness of our existence and to share our sweeter, sometimes concealed, emotions of fellowship and affection; the love that has deep, untouchable, delicious roots I our hearts, tingly roots that are mysteriously connected to the universe.
Love and dreams made the beans so tender and delicious beyond memory. Love and dreams made the mashed potatoes a fork full of sweet emotions that fed our famished spirits. Love and dreams made the carefully selected ingredients of the salad seem as carefully fashioned as an expression of joy from a lovely child.
That delicate yet eternal love spilled over into my three-hour lecture on the mountain top, which spilled over into the additional hour of sweet chaos after the talk ended, while we gathered under a full moon, fire-red sunset long embers
In 1850, just two hundred years ago, the California legislature passed a series of laws making it an honorable duty to kill indigenous and the bounty for that noble service was the same as for a coyote scalp, $5.00. Today, standing under the sun watching a happiness welding many thoughts into one emotion, this indigenous person flipped through our history seeing many changes to our lives. Standing on the sands, under a vast and silken sky, before a relaxed and endless ocean, laughter exploding all around, I looked far past the powder blue sky to the universe that begins in infinity and touches the infinity within each of our hearts. I thanked Aponiha for the precious moments we had the pleasure to experience, for joining us, and for the love that is in abundance, holding us each just near enough to sun that life is mostly beautiful, but I thanked the Great Powers especially for issuing us each the wisdom to cultivate that sweet emotion I our deeper selves that neither can be altered nor polluted.
Yes, many things have changed since the adventures of Columbus, but love has not. Watching the children run and hearing them scream with delight, wrapped in a protective mantle of open sky, my heart cried.
Thank you Santa Cruz Indian Council, special friends, students of Stan Rushworth’s valued class at Cabrillo college, Santa Cruz, and the Santa Cruz community at large that participated with us on that tender day in October, 2008.
Sul’ma’ejote
Aka, Darryl Babe Wilson
It was the season of Apnui (flowered Summer), 516 years after Columbus’ crude penetration into this hemisphere. Sun seemed happy talking with a pleasant and endless powder-blue sky. Soft breaths of wind stirred small ripples across the mirror-surface of the vast and powerful ocean, seeming to slumber in the warmth of the day. It was a pot-luck early dinner encouraged into being by members of the Santa Cruz Indian Council.
It is true. We had clam chowder when we should have had fresh abalone and mussels.
It is true we had contemporary salad when we should have had
seaweed, dandelions and the stomach contents from a freshly taken deer.
It is true we had mashed potatoes when we should have had crushed, boiled seeds from a thousand different abundant plants from the thousand hills.
It is true we had fried chicken when we should have had roasted turtle.
It is true that we had bottled water from the nearby grocery store instead of a basket of water from the nearby fresh-water spring.
It is true that we had cookies and pie instead of a basket of honey we dipped with two fingers, moving it quickly to our mouths like thin, delicious poi.
It seems that our entire diets have been drastically changed because of the great wisdoms found in “civilization.” And in the civilization of the water and the landscape. The vast ocean has been polluted with much waste and today a cautious mother will not allow her children to bathe there, or even wade. The fresh-water springs from earth are damaged and dried up. The ocean is stripped of abalone and the ocean floor is raked clean of clams, shrimp and other creatures out of ecological balance. Turtles no longer lay eggs for their generations to continue. The seaweed is more polluted than the ocean. The variety of seeds upon the many hills atrophy because the air is polluted and often the rain, too. It is difficult to locate real honey nowadays, but every grocery store has an endless variety of “cultured” honey that is not created from flower nectars but from bees in captivity with only sugar-water to knead their honey from.
So many things have changed since the European violation of the western hemisphere, too many to list or remember.
But there was something at that little dinner on the beach that is neither rare nor
atrophying, love. The love between a variety of earth’s people, and the love of our breaths to freely partake of and share the sweetness of our existence and to share our sweeter, sometimes concealed, emotions of fellowship and affection; the love that has deep, untouchable, delicious roots I our hearts, tingly roots that are mysteriously connected to the universe.
Love and dreams made the beans so tender and delicious beyond memory. Love and dreams made the mashed potatoes a fork full of sweet emotions that fed our famished spirits. Love and dreams made the carefully selected ingredients of the salad seem as carefully fashioned as an expression of joy from a lovely child.
That delicate yet eternal love spilled over into my three-hour lecture on the mountain top, which spilled over into the additional hour of sweet chaos after the talk ended, while we gathered under a full moon, fire-red sunset long embers
In 1850, just two hundred years ago, the California legislature passed a series of laws making it an honorable duty to kill indigenous and the bounty for that noble service was the same as for a coyote scalp, $5.00. Today, standing under the sun watching a happiness welding many thoughts into one emotion, this indigenous person flipped through our history seeing many changes to our lives. Standing on the sands, under a vast and silken sky, before a relaxed and endless ocean, laughter exploding all around, I looked far past the powder blue sky to the universe that begins in infinity and touches the infinity within each of our hearts. I thanked Aponiha for the precious moments we had the pleasure to experience, for joining us, and for the love that is in abundance, holding us each just near enough to sun that life is mostly beautiful, but I thanked the Great Powers especially for issuing us each the wisdom to cultivate that sweet emotion I our deeper selves that neither can be altered nor polluted.
Yes, many things have changed since the adventures of Columbus, but love has not. Watching the children run and hearing them scream with delight, wrapped in a protective mantle of open sky, my heart cried.
Thank you Santa Cruz Indian Council, special friends, students of Stan Rushworth’s valued class at Cabrillo college, Santa Cruz, and the Santa Cruz community at large that participated with us on that tender day in October, 2008.
Sul’ma’ejote
Aka, Darryl Babe Wilson
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Haydutsi
9-27-08
HAYDUTSI
A breath from outer-world came and whispered ripples across mirror surface of
lake, dreaming in solitude. A pair of mallards V’d by like an imagination upon the water,
Upon distant shore white egrets and black cormorant were drying I the early sun, sun-bathing in the wonder all around, gossiping.
Slumbering lake’s face, placid, silent, sweet, dreamy, rippled now and then from a whispering breath from the east then the north.
My spirit waited for a breath from the south, for that sweet breath might bear haydutsi, A delicate haydutsi from my baby girl who is upon a precious, perhaps, perilous journey to the center of the Indigenous world, Machu Picchu, resting atop the Andes.
Whisper came from the south, baby said, “Akon (Grandpa).” I sensed a moment of hesitation in her whisper.
My haydutsi returned the soft plea, saying “Baby, obey only the powers that cause the universe to churn forever. Allow nothing else to hinder your mission.”
Haydutsi then lifted from the placid surface like a hummingbird, creating a rippling dimple to merge with Aponi’ha (Great Wonder), to travel to her in the far south of Mexico.
Haydutsi found her there in the ruins of a temple thinking, surrounded by the universe. Once again my spirit thought, “Baby, continue the quest, for it is those who cannot and will not search for greater powers within themselves, who will attempt to impede your dream, for they know not that it is a dream I am always near you, my tinihowi, (guardian), melak’me’da (mountain lion), walks ahead of you and Tamciye (little people) surround you. They know that your dream will find satisfaction only when the Great Powers embrace you, holding you close to the heart of tolol tollim (forever and always), and they will assist you through, under, around and over any peril. Akon”
Little lake smiled hearing the ancient language, a tribe of geese splashed down. Like a ghost-shadow egrets took flight skimming the waters toward their little island and safety, vanishing into the early reflections. Earth breathed long and deep. Solitude was master.
Landscape took on another character as humans invaded the peaceful quiet, laughing.
(As we left the little park and the shattered solitude, a young white man came running with his dog, pointing to our car. We slowed and stopped. He kept coming, pointing now to the top of the car. The boys remembered that they forgot their coffee cups on the roof while they helped me into the car. One boy jumped out and grabbed the coffee. A little embarrassed,we all laughed, dog, too).
HAYDUTSI
A breath from outer-world came and whispered ripples across mirror surface of
lake, dreaming in solitude. A pair of mallards V’d by like an imagination upon the water,
Upon distant shore white egrets and black cormorant were drying I the early sun, sun-bathing in the wonder all around, gossiping.
Slumbering lake’s face, placid, silent, sweet, dreamy, rippled now and then from a whispering breath from the east then the north.
My spirit waited for a breath from the south, for that sweet breath might bear haydutsi, A delicate haydutsi from my baby girl who is upon a precious, perhaps, perilous journey to the center of the Indigenous world, Machu Picchu, resting atop the Andes.
Whisper came from the south, baby said, “Akon (Grandpa).” I sensed a moment of hesitation in her whisper.
My haydutsi returned the soft plea, saying “Baby, obey only the powers that cause the universe to churn forever. Allow nothing else to hinder your mission.”
Haydutsi then lifted from the placid surface like a hummingbird, creating a rippling dimple to merge with Aponi’ha (Great Wonder), to travel to her in the far south of Mexico.
Haydutsi found her there in the ruins of a temple thinking, surrounded by the universe. Once again my spirit thought, “Baby, continue the quest, for it is those who cannot and will not search for greater powers within themselves, who will attempt to impede your dream, for they know not that it is a dream I am always near you, my tinihowi, (guardian), melak’me’da (mountain lion), walks ahead of you and Tamciye (little people) surround you. They know that your dream will find satisfaction only when the Great Powers embrace you, holding you close to the heart of tolol tollim (forever and always), and they will assist you through, under, around and over any peril. Akon”
Little lake smiled hearing the ancient language, a tribe of geese splashed down. Like a ghost-shadow egrets took flight skimming the waters toward their little island and safety, vanishing into the early reflections. Earth breathed long and deep. Solitude was master.
Landscape took on another character as humans invaded the peaceful quiet, laughing.
(As we left the little park and the shattered solitude, a young white man came running with his dog, pointing to our car. We slowed and stopped. He kept coming, pointing now to the top of the car. The boys remembered that they forgot their coffee cups on the roof while they helped me into the car. One boy jumped out and grabbed the coffee. A little embarrassed,we all laughed, dog, too).
Thursday, September 25, 2008
WINTER
A MOMENTARY PASSING OF THE WINTER AND MUCH PAIN
Like a veil upon an angel
mist hugs the valley floor
Frost soft upon the meadow
crisp wind through little door
A momentary ceasing of the patter on the pane
Sun reaches for the mountain top
to look across frigid land
So long we haven't seen it,
anticipatin' is just grand
A momentary ceasing of the patter on the pane
Diamonds crown the early grasses
as spring has made a start
here beside the crashing waters
music, silence touch the heart
A momentary passing of the snowing and the rain
It has been said by poets
and it has been sung by bards
that winter's chilly presence
means that spring is in the cards
A momentary ceasing od the snowing and the rain
A splash of brilliant sunlight
makes nearby mountains dance
brilliant bright and brilliant white
blinding, flashing! brilliant light
A momentary pasasing of the winter and much pain
Maybe the beginning to an ending
of another winter of too much discontent
March 10, 1985
Sam Spring It A'juma homeland, western hemisphere
Sul'ma'ejote
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
OUR LEADERS
SAM SPRING, WESTERN HEMISPHERE, It Ajuma,Autumn, 1984
In Chile they shoved the tattered poor
to the long grave
dug with angry machines
And while
holding automatic weapons upon them
manufactured in the United States of America,
demanded,
"Now. You. Tell us who your leaders are!"
The poor red people wailed with weakened breath,
"Our lesders are need and hunger."
O'America
when you finally force me to kneel at the long grave,
know that my leader is a dream of freedom from American values
and I have agreed with my dream
never to compromise our private
and healthy respect for each other
No matter what the demand
No matter what the threat
No matter what the odds
Sul ma ejote
In Chile they shoved the tattered poor
to the long grave
dug with angry machines
And while
holding automatic weapons upon them
manufactured in the United States of America,
demanded,
"Now. You. Tell us who your leaders are!"
The poor red people wailed with weakened breath,
"Our lesders are need and hunger."
O'America
when you finally force me to kneel at the long grave,
know that my leader is a dream of freedom from American values
and I have agreed with my dream
never to compromise our private
and healthy respect for each other
No matter what the demand
No matter what the threat
No matter what the odds
Sul ma ejote
Monday, September 22, 2008
GRANDMOTHER SPOKE A TRUE SAYING TO OUR LIFE-FORCE
April 23, 1990, 846 am, U. C. Davis
GRANDMOTHER SPOKE A TRUE SAYING TO OUR LIFE-FORCE
Strange beings entered our homeland
without permission from our Council
They attacked our lives and our villages
without warning or declaration of war
They destroyed the delicate balance
placed among us at the moment of the origin of earth
Within their citadels and protected by stone walls
the Americans huddle and plot
Within their books of knowledge and history
they scribble half-truths to feed the thoughts of their children,
and ours also
Within their hearts there is a torment
which they blame upon the existence of our indigenous people
Within the tombs
where they hold council and plan strategy,
they plot to farther injure the wounded lives of the indigenous,
thinking if they damaged us the more they can find forgiveness
for their horrible crimes committed upon us and our homelands
Why?
As chool (sun) continued its journey over earth
And fire exploded in sparks
As a youth dropped a chunk of wood onto the sleeping coals,
Ju’wa (Grandmother) spoke:
“It is because Nilladuwi have no history except
for that which they agree between themselves
They cannot be proud of their existence
They do not know where they are
They cannot humble their terrified lives”
Morning winds moved the tree tops
During the approaching day an infant cried
Jahom (dog) barked an answer to parting yodel of Jamol (coyote)
Grandfather returned from his morning “thinkings” beside the great river
Hawk, motionless in sky searched for movement on the land
River tumbled and crashed and whispered as it moved to outer-ocean
Mountains vibrated with songs of the universe
Dose (deer) moved softly in the shadows of the pine, browsing
A child peered through the smoke-hole of the lodge
eyes bright, liquid, deep, as the eyes of a fawn
Far to the south there were clouds billowing and there was thunder
“If I could start from the beginning I could tell you many things
but there is no beginning
All that is made was made by a song of Quan (Silver Fox) long ago
so long ago it is hard to remember
Before there was anything there was nothing.
no stars
no Milky Ways
no suns
no earths
no moons
All that there is was made with a song by Silver Fox long ago.”
Children laughed in the distance, dogs danced in the dust
Elk bugled from mountain meadow
Mountain lion moved softly through the morning shadows, dreaming
Fox dreamed a dream also
Salmon moved from outer ocean to rivers
Grandfather prepared a song
Warrior prepare the net
Grandmother sang the song.
Salmon glistened in the great river
and smoked over smoldering fire
“Children, you must know
Since we are the first people upon this land others are jealous
We was many things
We was first people
Merkans (Americans) cannot point to a time when they was here first
and this makes them very angry
“As you move through life
Remember always that all things, the origin of all that is,
is in the songs of long ago
The songs that we must remember and must sing
we must sing with softness, a whisper
For to brag is not our way and it is not the way of the universe.”
My life-power led me to the great river to reflect on the words of Grandmother
My power then led me to the great libraries of the world
to reflect upon the words of the invading beings, in solitude
And here is what I discovered:
It is true that truth lives within our songs
It is true that all that there is,
is within our understanding
It is true that earth is damaged, and we, also
It is true that the way to heal earth and ourselves
is through our songs and our understandings
It is true that we each are as important to life
as each snow flake is important to winter
Did this information come to me through the great libraries of the world?
No!
It came from the songs of the great river
that reflect the words of Grandmother
as morning sun smiled across earth
and copper/honey children laugh with dancing dogs
This is how it is
Sul’ma’ejote
GRANDMOTHER SPOKE A TRUE SAYING TO OUR LIFE-FORCE
Strange beings entered our homeland
without permission from our Council
They attacked our lives and our villages
without warning or declaration of war
They destroyed the delicate balance
placed among us at the moment of the origin of earth
Within their citadels and protected by stone walls
the Americans huddle and plot
Within their books of knowledge and history
they scribble half-truths to feed the thoughts of their children,
and ours also
Within their hearts there is a torment
which they blame upon the existence of our indigenous people
Within the tombs
where they hold council and plan strategy,
they plot to farther injure the wounded lives of the indigenous,
thinking if they damaged us the more they can find forgiveness
for their horrible crimes committed upon us and our homelands
Why?
As chool (sun) continued its journey over earth
And fire exploded in sparks
As a youth dropped a chunk of wood onto the sleeping coals,
Ju’wa (Grandmother) spoke:
“It is because Nilladuwi have no history except
for that which they agree between themselves
They cannot be proud of their existence
They do not know where they are
They cannot humble their terrified lives”
Morning winds moved the tree tops
During the approaching day an infant cried
Jahom (dog) barked an answer to parting yodel of Jamol (coyote)
Grandfather returned from his morning “thinkings” beside the great river
Hawk, motionless in sky searched for movement on the land
River tumbled and crashed and whispered as it moved to outer-ocean
Mountains vibrated with songs of the universe
Dose (deer) moved softly in the shadows of the pine, browsing
A child peered through the smoke-hole of the lodge
eyes bright, liquid, deep, as the eyes of a fawn
Far to the south there were clouds billowing and there was thunder
“If I could start from the beginning I could tell you many things
but there is no beginning
All that is made was made by a song of Quan (Silver Fox) long ago
so long ago it is hard to remember
Before there was anything there was nothing.
no stars
no Milky Ways
no suns
no earths
no moons
All that there is was made with a song by Silver Fox long ago.”
Children laughed in the distance, dogs danced in the dust
Elk bugled from mountain meadow
Mountain lion moved softly through the morning shadows, dreaming
Fox dreamed a dream also
Salmon moved from outer ocean to rivers
Grandfather prepared a song
Warrior prepare the net
Grandmother sang the song.
Salmon glistened in the great river
and smoked over smoldering fire
“Children, you must know
Since we are the first people upon this land others are jealous
We was many things
We was first people
Merkans (Americans) cannot point to a time when they was here first
and this makes them very angry
“As you move through life
Remember always that all things, the origin of all that is,
is in the songs of long ago
The songs that we must remember and must sing
we must sing with softness, a whisper
For to brag is not our way and it is not the way of the universe.”
My life-power led me to the great river to reflect on the words of Grandmother
My power then led me to the great libraries of the world
to reflect upon the words of the invading beings, in solitude
And here is what I discovered:
It is true that truth lives within our songs
It is true that all that there is,
is within our understanding
It is true that earth is damaged, and we, also
It is true that the way to heal earth and ourselves
is through our songs and our understandings
It is true that we each are as important to life
as each snow flake is important to winter
Did this information come to me through the great libraries of the world?
No!
It came from the songs of the great river
that reflect the words of Grandmother
as morning sun smiled across earth
and copper/honey children laugh with dancing dogs
This is how it is
Sul’ma’ejote
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