September 15, 1998, San Jose, CA
Genius cannot be quelled by swords
flashing in the sun
By
Sul’ma’ejote
Questioning the established form of native history as presented by academics (which includes an array of indigenous beings), and intending to repeal the current paradigm of viewing indigenous narratives as “myth” and therefore subject to rejection as “Old fabricated Indian stories,” one of my goals in life is to bring to the surface of the ocean of misinformation a different interpretation of the meaning and purpose of native oral literature, our histories passed from generation to generation through story, song, and dance.
I have been molded into a student of oral history/original narration/voiced literature, particular to my people who dwell in the northeastern corner of “California.” However, my pursuit of a greater understanding is not restricted to that arena. In a broader sense, my study is etched, like a pattern in sterling, in the western hemisphere, from the polar rim to the tip of South America. But it also includes the whole of the universe because oral literature is a universe-based event.
My tribes are currently known to academics as Achomawi and Atsugewi, and by unclean politics as The Pit River Tribe of California. Contrary to the changes of our identity, I remain Itami is on my mother’s side and Aw’te on my father’s. Politics, that abrasive element that has been created by EuroAmericans that interferes with even their own progress, has caused chaos among many native people of this western hemisphere.
As an Itami is/Aw’te person, autochthonous to the land area currently identified as “California,” I am rooted in history, culture, and tradition through the languages, oral literatures (story telling), and songs of my people – much of which is still protected by silence. As in all tribal homelands, language is the foundation of our identity and explains our understandings, while songs are our connection to the powers that move the universe in an orderly fashion causing us to seek and to entertain greater wisdom and knowledge.
Our oral literature, then, becomes our societal map. It is the spiritual instrument employing the voices of our ancestors that clearly explains our tribal experience from our origin, expanding ever outward to connect us to our destinies and destinations. Today, passing on lessons and legends in narrative form is often called “storytelling.” And the story, if accepted by bold elements of the heart, creates a sterling umbilical cord “attachment” from the listener and the earth to the center of the universe.
After we realize that we are breathing somewhere within the living fluid sphere of the universe, we then can better understand our Elders of ancient knowledge when they explain that ours is a never ending journey, that we are traveling in a vast and boundless season, restricted only by our individual capacity to understand and accept:
“I think there was no beginning,
Because if there was a beginning there would be an ending.
Since there is no ending,
There cannot be a beginning.”
(Craven Gibson, Atwum, 1972).
Craven, one of our Elder tribal councilmen (often slurred by my assimilated/acculturated people as “An old drunk.”), gave me these brilliant and powerful words after I had traveled around much of the world seeking the wise people, those yet close to the earth and nature power, asking if they knew of “a beginning.” At that time I thought that if I knew when the beginning began, I could explain when the ending was going to end – at least to myself.
I found no such explanation on my extensive tour and I was secretly embarrassed to learn that I had to travel only twenty miles from my camp to get the answer to my perplexing question!
The strength and validity of our wise people, both ancient and contemporary, is their direct connection with the powers of the universe and their capacity to feather back into nature when threatened, and equally, their wisdom to shun “civilization” and its spiritually corrosive effects. Often, if we have the capacity to listen and follow (an ability that seems to flourish among the youth of this generation), our wise beings lead us into expressions of life, or reveal information to us that sometimes tests our abilities to accept or to comprehend.
Therefore, the more we allow ourselves to learn and to understand the more that we discover the foundation of our culture is a spirit-based spherical-collage of intricate details (that received its pattern before earth began its journey around the sun) from our own experiences, to the balanced activities of our forefathers, to the intricate and necessary dreams and songs of our foremothers, all stirred together and assembled around the explanations of our purposes to exist, by our current Keepers-of-Wisdom.
It is, then, our cultural interpretation of our origin that gives us direction and causes us to strive for harmony within both our communities and our natural surroundings, while longing to leave a beautiful, wholesome earth for the Seventh Generation from now. Our efforts to accomplish this are put into motion with oral expressions that have been unfolding for thousands of generations, like the wings of an eagle, to mingle with the morning wind in flight. We understand more clearly the function of the universe as we know it and as it has been presented to us by our Elders and leaders through narratives, prayers, thoughts, and other expressions. This has been occurring ever since the universe began its movement towards eternity and our spirit-powers were present to witness that event which invoked each of our destinies.
The moral of the narrative, which often seems an almost tangible fragment of our history, is the energy that propels most native nations through the process of existence – usually in the face of an immense amount of negative power emitting from an invading and foreign politics that intends to deny us our presence upon earth. The oral literatures, the narratives, the lessons and legends each are wisdom/knowledge formulas that came to us wrapped in a mist of necessary presence and remain immeasurable with instruments of technology. In the future we will create greater expressions from our experiences as we continue to invalidate the maize that civilized societies have awkwardly wrapped around us.
Our references expressed around the council fires, presented from ourselves to other native nations, propose that we remain tightly constructed like a water basket and be of one mind and one body in order to stall the foreign exercise of executing extinction upon us again and again. Non-native people may be one of our means of protection in this episode as we all attempt to reject our deficiencies and re-connect with our spiritual selves.
Our historic tribal experiences are created from love and peace, from adventures and trials, and from gift -giving, and from narratives and oral literature. Collectively these activities provide us with a way to survive. Indigenous must again remember that the power in the moral of the story is its value to be understood, accepted, applied, lived, and expanded upon. It is that critical part of our narratives that are passed on in perpetuity by our keepers-of-wisdom that simultaneously validates the purpose of the universe to us, personally, and validates our presence to the universal powers that softly breathe upon us.
Currently there is an exciting adventure that we are experiencing as native people of the western hemisphere ( I do not mean to suggest that this phenomenon is restricted to the western hemisphere, but I am much more familiar with this one-third of earth so I will address that which I know best. Please, this thought must not be translated as an expression neglecting other world events that are wisdom based and therefore the most precious parts of other autochthonous cultures and traditions), but there seems to be an immediate and vast offering from the various native wisdom-banks and seats-of-knowledge explaining that we are a people whose journey through existence began in space-exotic places, often from among the stars and galaxies, or remote and familiar places beyond.
In one of the origin narratives in my homeland it is understood that by magic, Silver-gray Fox, on a rope made of songs, came to this world from the land beyond the stars, evading Old man Coyote. Coyote was always changing things Silver created (In the structure of the universe Coyote was not gifted with the power to create. He did, however, receive the power to change things). Because of this, Coyote became jealous and changed everything that Silver created. (Coyote was not only jealous, he was crazy for creative power).
For millions of seasons in the land beyond the stars Silver could not teach Coyote to behave, to leave things alone, so Silver absconded. When Silver came here there was no here, here. He lifted the center post of his chema’ha (ceremonial round house) and dropped through. He traveled through time and space on that magic rope which he attached to the bottom of his chema’ha. With his magic Silver replaced the center post so Coyote could not discover how he left the land beyond the stars.
But Coyote did discover. Threatening a little grass basket in Silver’s chema’ha with cremation if it did not tell him where Silver went (little basket told in order to stay alive), Coyote came here with his own well thought out method, free falling and screaming through time and space. Of all the places in the vastness of the universe, Coyote just happened to land on the roof of Silver’s new chema’ha, “Crash! Thudd! When we ask our Elders how these things could happen they say (with a giggle), “I dunno. That is just the way it has always been with Coyote.”
Recently the Chumash of Southern California revealed some of their songs, many that have been silent since the original people felt the swords of Missionization. Some of their songs are of their journey through the stars to arrive here. The more the native people mingle with one another in the safety of confidence, the more the songs and narratives will appear that speak of spiritual and stellar travels. The Serrano/Cahuilla are now releasing knowledge about their journey through the stars to arrive here. Their Elders have suggested that it may be nearing the time to prepare to return. Almost every college student is familiar with the travels of Quetzalcoatl, who, in a political action, was put out of his homeland in what now is Mexico, traveling east to become the Morning Star. Many narratives of native nations contain references to stars and traveling to and from distant places, some so distant that it hurts both thought and imagination to follow.
However, history books created by invading populations have portrayed the indigenous of the western hemisphere as morbid, sloven shadows. Colonizers must do this in order to control the lives of the people that they are dominating. This allows the invaders to appear wholesome throughout the process of colonization. The challenge now is for indigenous, with the help of others, to throw off the layers of misinformation that have been piled for centuries upon us, like dead leaves on the forest floor, and annul the history-created distortions that cloud-liketend to accumulate over us. After that annulment we will initiate safeguards against further distorted attacks upon and erosion to our histories.
“This is a good day to live.” Thank you Susan Harjo (Champagne, Native American Portrait of the Peoples, p. 786).
Throughout hemispheric native country there must be a challenging of the established order of history. The indigenous are boldly speaking and singing about “origin.” The prevailing thought is that we are children of the universe, that the whole universe is our “Father,” and that every element within earth combines to be our “Mother.” Too, we must not restrict our dreams or alter our thoughts simply because someone else commands us to do so, verbally, with the printed word, or with a gun.
Threats cannot damage our purpose, our knowledge and wisdom, or our dreams. These gifts were given to us and we are now obliged to pass them to the next generation through narrative, legend, song and dance.
In our future there are both political and social terrains that may be difficult to traverse, but we will because we must. As Carlos Cordero stated,
“We come from great people
And so we must act like great people
Because we are great people”
(Hogle/Wilson, Surviving in Two Worlds, p. 90)
A thousand years ago, all knowledge and information was oral in form and passed from generation to generation by the spoken word or song, writing not yet established. The “word”, then, was the rule and the law. The word was beyond sacred. It was the trust-core of the community of humanity.
*Hisnawa, we must not allow our wholesome spirits to be eroded by employing the tactics of the invading forces, nor should we be dwarfed to the specifications that the colonizing powers dictate. We have more dignity than that. In defense we will accomplish this by reestablishing our proper position in the journey of humankind, and by acknowledging our universal origin as we express our histories in a variety of comprehensive ways.
What does storytelling and California native culture and history mean to me as an indigenous person? Aside from becoming much more personal with the vastness of the universe through recently unveiled native wisdom and knowledge while studying all forms of earth-life, I marvel at the function of entirety while I wander among the stars seeking answers to questions that are yet whispers from eternity to the heart of our life-spirit. I also spend more time worrying about civilization’s relentless assault upon earth’s delicate habitat. But the question is best answered by my 5th grade summer school student, Theresa M. Jolivette (Summer, 1997, Sacramento, CA).
“History is everything.
History is old redwoods, art, animals, battle grounds.”
(Theresa and several of her classmates are featured in “California Cobblestone,” 1998).
Theresa is correct and her expression deserves both to be studied and to be pondered. Our histories are everything. They have been diluted and gnarled by the establishment ever since Eric the Red trespassed upon “The People of the Dawn,” and attacked a group of nine natives, killing eight. “Attacked in turn by a second group of natives in skin boats who fatally wounded Thorvald with an arrow.” (Waldman, Atlas of the American Indian, p. 79).
Historically this defensive act by “The People of the Dawn” is viewed by the masses as savages perpetrating high crimes against a peaceful and adventuring people. That is not so. Eric the Red, his children and his clan were expelled from their Norwiejan homeland because Eric committed heinous crimes. Wandering and angry, they assaulted first and last. That assault upon the native body beginning A.D. 894, continues in a variety of modes up to this moment.
Who will put our literatures and our interpretations of world history into perspective? Who will cause historic truth to surface and to mingle with indigenous knowledge so it can be properly reflected upon? Those among us, *Hisnawa, who cannot be defeated and whose dreams cannot be amended or made mute. Not only do we come from great people, but we emerge from genius, too. All people must know, genius cannot be quelled by swords flashing in the sun.
Sul’ma’ejote/Akon
* Hisnawa: “Young Warriors
