Sundance Excerpt



Below you will find a passage from Walter McClintock’s book The Old North Trail.  It describes a portion of the ceremony performed on the first day of the Sundance.  Note how it honors many of the other animals that inhabited the ecosystem.  The ceremony was born in an era prior to the settler’s war on wildlife, and before the arrival of the cult of human supremacy.

The relationship of the Blackfeet to the other animals was one of profound reverence, respect, and adoration.  McClintock presents us with a magnificent example of a culture that was nearly the opposite of ours.  It was not insanely self-destructive, surviving at the cost of unborn generations.  It was a way of life that could have continued for a very long time.  All of us have ancestors who once lived in a similar manner.  We carry their blood and genes.  Here is McClintock:

Ceremonial Transferring the Medicine Pipe

The ceremonial transferring the Medicine Pipe from Lone Chief to Mu-koi-sa-po began just as the sun rose from the plains.  Its bright rays streaming into the open lodge, fell upon the priests chanting the seven Thunder songs, beating on their medicine drums, and burning sweet pine as incense.  After the Thunder songs, Lone Chief, as the giver up of the Pipe held it in his arms singing:

“I am now moving around.”  The Pipe was laid down during the tenth song, all chanting in unison: “I will sit down.”  In the eleventh, or buffalo song, all chanted: “I will take away the Chief’s (Pipe’s) robe,” and made the sign of the buffalo with their curved forefingers, while Mu-koi-sa-po and his wife opened the outside cover of the medicine bundle.

They chanted the Antelope song and imitated with their hands the motions of an antelope walking, while the strings of antelope rawhide were being loosened.  It was explained that the antelope is supposed to be opening the bundle with his hoofs.  While loosening an inner wrapper, bound by strings of elk hide, they chanted an Elk song and made the Elk sign, holding their hands open on either side of the head with fingers extended to represent antlers.  They imitated the actions of an elk as if loosening the wrapper with his hoofs. 

The time had now come for the dances to be held over the skins representing the spirits of the birds and animals included in the medicine bundle.  Only members of the society danced with the Pipe, although it was customary for anyone, who made a vow, to fulfil that vow by dancing with a skin provided for that purpose.  Whenever a prominent chief arose to take part, or an Indian who had performed some unusual feat, he was applauded by the spectators.  Mu-koi-sa-po, as the recipient of the Pipe, did not rise to dance, but remained seated beside the medicine bundle, receiving the skins as they were turned over to him by those taking part in the ceremonial.

For the Grizzly Bear dance, the drummers chanted “I begin to grow restless in the spring,” representing a bear making ready to come from his winter den.  Lone Chief drew his robe around him and arose to dance, imitating the bear going from his den and chanting: “I take my robe.  My robe is sacred.  I wander in the summer.”

Placing both hands upon the Pipe, he chanted, “Sacred Chief, (Pipe)!  Every one, men, women, and children will now behold you.”  Slowly raising the Pipe, he sang, “The Great Mystery beholds our Chief arise.  The Chief is sacred.”  He shook the Pipe in imitation of a bear, but was careful not to handle it roughly, lest a storm should come, nor to make a misstep in his dance, nor allow a skin, or feather to fall, lest some misfortune would befall him.  He again laid the Pipe down, with the chant, “This lodge is sacred; the ground, also, where the Chief lies is sacred.”

While Lone Chief danced with the Pipe, the drummers beat time and chanted Bear songs.  He imitated with his hands a bear holding up its paws, and, placing his feet together, moved backward and forward, with short jumps, making the lumbering movements of a bear running, breathing heavily and imitating his digging and turning over stones for insects.  Then he blew shrilly upon his medicine whistle, representing the sounds made by the wings of the Thunder Bird, which comes forth in the spring at the same time that the bear leaves his winter den.  He held the Pipe in his right hand, spreading out the fingers of his left in imitation of the wings of the flying Thunder Bird.

During the Swan song, Bear Child danced alone, representing the chief Swan, the leader of the flock.  He made the Swan sign, with both hands held before him, palms out and fingers spread in imitation of a swan sailing through the air with extended wings.

In the Antelope dance, Red Fox made motions with his hands, in imitation of an antelope walking, moving the Pipe in the same manner and looking keenly alert, as if watching for an enemy.

During the singing of the Crane song, the dancers imitated the motions of flying Cranes and gave the crane call.  There were no dances for water birds, but the people remained seated, while songs were sung for the ducks and geese.  Mu-koi-sa-po and his wife were painted, during the four Horse songs, sometimes called Resting songs.  It was necessary to sing all the words and notes of these four songs accurately, because, if anyone made a mistake, misfortune would surely come to his horses.

After a short rest, during which a pipe was passed around for a smoke, seven Owl songs were sung.  They were followed by seven Buffalo songs, in honor of the power that went with the band of sacred white buffalo skin, which was to be worn around the head of the Pipe owner.  Seven songs were also sung to a water bird called Good Rusher, because it runs so fast along the surface of the water and is believed to possess great power.  It is said to drown people by dragging them beneath the water.  The muskrat skin was used by its owner to wipe the paint from his face accompanied with the song, “All the water birds and little water animals are my friends.”

The Bee songs are sung by the owner of the Pipe as a warning, when he is angered, because anyone that angers a bee will be stung.  The Bee songs are also believed to possess, not only power for making the owner proof against any spell, or evil charm, but also to cause the evil power to react upon the enemy that is trying to injure him.  The woman’s pipe, which goes with the Medicine Pipe, has a plain flat stem and is not decorated.  During the ceremonial, it was unrolled by Etomo-waki and was smoked only by the women.

The Medicine Pipe is decorated with feathers and weasel tails.  The owner begins smoking it by blowing a whiff first towards the sky and another towards the ground.  The closing song of the ceremonial was the Good Luck song, which should bring good fortune to Mu-koi-sa-po.  Whenever he might wish for anything, as owner of the Medicine Pipe, it would only be necessary for him to sing this song to have his desire fulfilled.

At sunset, Lone Chief led Mu-koi-sa-po and his wife, Etomo-waki, from the lodge and, facing in turn the four directions, chanted first towards the West, “Over there are the mountains.  May you see them as long as you live, for from them you must receive your sweet pine as incense.”

Then towards the North, “Strength will come from the North.  May you look for many years upon the star that never moves (North Star).”

Then towards the East, “Old age will come from below (East) where lies the light of the sun.”

Then towards the South, “May the warm winds of the South bring you success in securing food.”

<snip>

My review of The Old North Trail is HERE.  A free download of McClintock’s book is HERE.  Over 1,400 of his photos are HERE (click on “View all images”).

Braiding Sweetgrass

Science is a painfully tight pair of shoes.  It perceives the family of life to be little more than a complex biochemical machine.  It has created powerful tools for ravaging the planet’s ecosystems, creating a hard path for our descendants.  It gives us knowing, but not caring.  It’s not about wisdom.  It’s about pursuing the wants and needs of humans, with less concern for the more-than-human world.

Robin Kimmerer is a biology professor.  After being trained in the rigid beliefs of science, she heard a Navajo woman talk about the realm of plants from the perspective of indigenous knowledge.  For that woman, plants were not subjects, but teachers.  In a flash, Kimmerer realized the shallowness of her scientific training.  It only provides a pinhole view of reality.  Science is not enough.

Her grandfather was Potawatomi.  When he was a boy, the government sent him away to the Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he was trained to become an English-speaking wageworker.  He forgot his language and culture and drifted away from his people.  He never felt at home in either world.

Kimmerer has worked hard to reconnect with her Native American roots, because traditional indigenous cultures are blessed with a far more holistic relationship with the family of life.  All people on Earth have tribal ancestors who once lived close to the land, but so much has been lost with the passage of centuries.  Her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, is a collection of stories that focus on living with respect and reverence for the land.

She once asked a city lad where his sense of place felt strongest.  He immediately responded, “My car.”  Her book is especially important for the impoverished millions, who have grown up indoors, in a ghoulish netherworld of glowing screens.  She has a strong and respectful relationship with the land, and she describes it beautifully.  It’s a perspective that is almost absent in our culture, and without it, a long-term future for humans is impossible.  We must remember.

While explaining the culture of sharing, respect, and gratitude, she does not conceal her scientist badge.  So, readers are less tempted to automatically dismiss her stories as daffy rainbows of New Age woo-woo.  Science is not worthless.  In the centuries of restoration that lie ahead, it can offer some useful ideas, if we keep it on a short leash.  Nature will play a primary role in healing the land as much as possible — it knows what to do.  The far bigger challenge is dealing with the monsters that inhabit the goop between our ears.

In the native world, when a patch of ripe strawberries is discovered, the plants are warmly greeted.  The people ask permission to take some berries.  If the response is yes, they take only what they need, never more than half of the fruit.  The plants are thanked for their gift, and the pickers leave an offering of tobacco.

Gifts and responsibilities are two sides of the same coin.  The berry pickers now have an obligation to promote the wellbeing of the strawberry people, by depositing their seeds in good locations (not a toilet).  This is a relationship of reciprocity between berries and people.  The berry eaters need the plants, and the plants need the berry eaters.

On the other hand, the relationship between mainstream people and nonrenewable resources is not reciprocal.  The oil, coal, iron, and other minerals do not need the miners, nor is their wellbeing improved by the mining.  The planet’s atmosphere does not appreciate our toxic offerings of carbon emissions.  The ecosystem does not enjoy being treated like an open pit mine.

Cultures that enjoy a direct and intimate relationship with their ecosystem have far more respect for it than those that forage at malls and supermarkets.  Consumer culture receives enormous gifts from the land, but gives almost none in return.  Kimmerer’s students clearly understand that the relationship between consumers and nature is abusive.  It’s difficult for them to imagine what a healthy relationship would look like. 

Kimmerer lives in the Onondaga Nation.  At the school, the Haudenosaunee flag blows in the breeze, not the stars and stripes.  There is no pledge of allegiance to a political system that claims to provide “liberty and justice for all.”  Instead, each day begins with the Thanksgiving Address, in which the students express gratitude for all of creation.  It helps them remember that, “everything needed to sustain life is already here.”  We are wealthy.

I had one issue with the book.  Natives from corn-growing cultures see corn as sacred.  Corn was a recent arrival to the region of the eastern U.S.  Its expansion spurred population growth and conflict.  We know that hunter-gatherers could succeed in achieving genuine sustainability when they lived with the wisdom of voluntary self-restraint.  But environmental history has not documented a culture achieving sustainability via intensive agriculture.

Potawatomi legends describe a dangerous spirit called the Windigo.  It wanders across the land in the lean months of winter.  It is always hungry, and never stops hunting.  It’s a selfish spirit that is obsessed with its own survival, by any means necessary.  The Windigo is notorious for having an insatiable hunger.  The moral of the story is to share, to take care of one another.  Don’t be a greedy butthead.

Much to the horror of the natives, the colonists imported a diabolical spirit of incredible self-destructive overindulgence — Super Windigo.  In white society, mastering the madness of insatiable consumption was seen as an admirable mark of success!  Kimmerer winces.  “We spend our beautiful, utterly singular lives on making more money, to buy more things that feed but never satisfy.  It is the Windigo way that tricks us into believing that belongings will fill our hunger, when it is belonging that we crave.”

After a lifetime of shopping and discarding, we don’t return our bodies to nature.  The dead are placed in heavy caskets and buried deep in the ground, where nature will struggle for centuries to retrieve the nutrients.  I’ve always hoped that my corpse would be eaten by mountain lions in a wild location, an offering to an ecosystem upon which I have lived far too hard.

From other books, I have learned about cultures that did something like this.  Carl Jung noted that the Maasai tribe did not bury their dead.  Corpses were left outdoors for the hyenas to eat.  John Gunther wrote that the Bakutu people of the Congo recycled corpses by laying them on a termite hill.  In sky burial, corpses are fed to the vultures.  This is done in Tibet, and in Zoroastrian communities in India.  Evan Pritchard noted that the Western Algonquin people also practiced it.

Over the years, Kimmerer has heard the Thanksgiving Address recited countless times.  It is so inspiring to listen to people express gratitude for all of creation.  She longs for the day “when we can hear the land give thanks for the people in return.”  So do I.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall, Braiding Sweetgrass, Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, 2013.

Questions for a Resilient Future is a 17-minute talk given by Kimmerer.

Returning the Gift is a brief essay.

Wisdom Sits in Places

Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Shell, Safeway, the highway matrix — everyone knows these culturally significant features of our landscape.  Less well known are the natural features of the land: the hills, prairies, ponds, and streams.  Our landscape watched the mammoths roam, it watched the furious madness of civilization, and it will watch the manmade eyesores dissolve into ancient ruins.

Waking up in the civilized world each morning is a jolt — jets, sirens, the endless rumble of machines.  Most of us live amidst hordes of two-legged tumbleweeds, nameless strangers.  We are the people from nowhere, blown out of our ancestral homelands by the howling winds of ambition and misfortune.  Our wild ancestors never lived here.  Carson McCullers wrote, “To know who you are, you have to have a place to come from.”

Pssst!  Over here!  I’ve found the entrance to another realm, a temporary place of refuge, an escape from the madness.  It’s called Wisdom Sits in Places, and it was written by Keith Basso (1940-2013), an ethnographer-linguist.  In 1959, he began spending time in the Apache village of Cibecue, in Arizona.  He discovered a culture that had deep roots in the land, and a way of living that was far from insane.

The Apache culture also had entrances to other realms.  Many places on their land had names, and many of these named places were associated with stories, and many of these stories had ancient roots.  Everyone in Cibecue knew the named places, and their stories.  The voices of the wild ancestors could be heard whenever the stories were told, and their words were always conveyed in the present tense.  “Now we are in for trouble!”  Past and present swirled together.

The stories were a treasure of time-proven wisdom.  They often provided moral messages that taught the virtues of honorable living, and the unpleasant rewards of poor choices.  When people wandered off the good path, stories reminded them of where this would lead.  They helped people to live well.  Because of the power in the stories, the natives said, “The land looks after the people.” 

Most scholars who spend time learning about other cultures were raised in the modern world of nowhere.  These experts would study languages, ceremonies, food production, clothing, spirituality, and so on — but they paid too little attention to the relationship between culture and place, because this notion was absent in their way of knowing.  Often, the reports they published were missing essential components.

From 1979 to 1984, Basso worked on a project that blew his mind.  The Anglo world had zero respect for sacred places when there was big money to be made.  But natives didn’t want their sacred places destroyed, so they hired experts to document their culturally significant sites.  Elders took Basso to see these places, and record their stories.  He created a map that covered 45 square miles, and had 296 locations with Apache place names.

Ruth Patterson told Basso about her childhood in the 1920s and 1930s.  In those days, families spent much time on the land, away from the village.  They herded cattle, tended crops, roasted agave, and hunted.  As they moved about, parents taught their children about the land.  They pointed out places, spoke their names, and told the stories of those places.  They wanted their children to be properly educated.

Apaches used historic stories for healing purposes.  Nothing could be more impolite than directly criticizing another person, expressing anger, or providing unrequested advice.  Instead, the elders used stories to “shoot” healing notions.  During a conversation, they would mention the names of places having stories that would be good for the wayward person to remember.  Then, hopefully, he or she would reflect on the stories, understand their relevance, and make the changes needed to return to balance.

One time, three wise women sat with a woman who was too sad.  The first wise woman spoke a sentence that mentioned a place name.  Then the second mentioned another place.  So did the third.  The sad woman recalled mental pictures of those places, and heard the ancestors’ voices speak the stories of those places.  She reflected on their meanings, and the clouds lifted.  She laughed.  This was a gentle, effective, and brilliant act of healing.  They called it “speaking with names.” 

One day, Dudley Patterson was talking about stories and wisdom.  Basso asked him, “What is wisdom?”  Patterson replied, “It’s in these places.  Wisdom sits in places.”  In a long and beautiful passage, he told Basso how his grandmother explained the pursuit of wisdom.  Everyone is different.  Some are smart, some are half-smart, but only a few achieve wisdom.  Wisdom is acquired via a long dedicated quest; no one is born with it.

When elders become wise, people can see them change.  They are calm and confident.  They are not fearful, selfish, or angry.  They keep promises.  They pay careful attention, always listening for the voices of the ancestors.  Patterson’s grandmother summed it up something like this:

“Wisdom sits in places.  It’s like water that never dries up.  You need to drink water to stay alive, don’t you?  Well, you also need to drink from places.  You must remember everything about them.  You must learn their names.  You must remember what happened at them long ago.  You must think about it and keep on thinking about it.  Then your mind will become smoother and smoother.  Then you will see danger before it happens.  You will walk a long way and live a long time.  You will be wise.  People will respect you.”

Years later, when Basso sat down to write his book, Cibecue had changed.  The road to the village had been paved, and there was a school, supermarket, medical clinic, and many new houses.  Big screen televisions were a new source of stories, sent from the spirit world of corporations, not ancestors.  People were spending far less time wandering about, old trails had grown over, and the younger generations were losing their connection to the land and its old-fashioned stories.  They preferred the new and useful information provided at school.

So, the book invites us to contemplate a society far different from our own.  It calls up ancient memories.  Everyone’s wild ancestors once lived in a way something like the Apaches.  It’s inspiring to remember this.  Observing the world from a tribal perspective allows us to realize how far we’ve strayed.  The people from nowhere are paying a terrible price for the frivolous wonders of modernity, and the wreckage it leaves behind.

Basso wrote, “We are, in a sense, the place-worlds we imagine.”  Prince Charles said it a bit differently:  “In so many ways we are what we are surrounded by, in the same way as we are what we eat.”  In the traditional Apache world, the people were surrounded by a beautiful culture that encouraged respect, caring, and wisdom.  In the modern consumer world, we’re surrounded by a wisdom-free nightmare of hurricane-force infantile energy reminiscent of a Godzilla movie.  But all hurricanes die.  Our Dark Age will pass.  Think positive!

Basso, Keith H., Wisdom Sits in Places, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1996.

Make Prayers to the Raven

In 1976 and 1977, anthropologist Richard Nelson lived with the Koyukon people of northwestern Alaska.  Their vast forested homeland is in the region where the Koyukuk River feeds into the Yukon River.  They are Athapaskan people, and they live inland from the Inupiaq Eskimos, who inhabit the coastal region to the west.

When Russian explorers found the Koyukon in 1838, they already had tobacco, iron pots, and other stuff, acquired via trade with Eskimos.  They had already been hammered by smallpox.  In 1898, they experienced a sudden infestation of gold prospectors; luckily, their streams were gold-free.  Unluckily, the gold rush ended their isolation from white society.  Swarms of missionaries and educators buzzed around the forest, determined to help the ignorant heathens rise out of barbarism, and experience the miracles of civilization and damnation.

When Nelson arrived in 1976, they were no longer nomadic.  About 2,000 Koyukon lived in eleven villages.  They travelled by snowmobile, hunted with rifles, and worshipped a Jewish guru.  Most of those under 30 spoke only English, and some were not fond of anthropologists.  Nelson spent a lot of time with the elders, who had been raised in the old ways.  Then he wrote an important book, Make Prayers to the Raven.  (In their stories, the creator was Raven.)

The Koyukon were the opposite of vegans.  About 90 percent of their diet was animal foods.  The bears, moose, geese, and salmon they ate came from the surrounding area, and were killed, butchered, and cooked by close friends and family.  Their survival depended on the wildlife.  They were extremely careful to take only what they needed, and to waste nothing.

Their wilderness was the opposite of big box grocery outlets that have an endless supply of fizzy sugar drinks, frozen pizza, and corn chips.  A year of abundant salmon might be followed by a meager year.  During Nelson’s visit, there were plenty moose and caribou, animals that had been scarce 30 years earlier.  The Koyukon had to pay close attention to the land, and continually fine-tune their relationship to it.  When times were lean, people starved — prior to the adaptation of rifles.  Now, they also had dependable access to the mysterious industrial substances that white folks referred to as “food.”

Traditional Koyukon society needed nothing from the outside world.  Their relationship to the ecosystem was one of absolute reverence and respect.  They were not masters or managers, they were simply members of the family of life.  The humble status of humans is evident in a frequently quoted phrase: “Every animal knows way more than you do.”

Nelson said it like this: “Traditional Koyukon people live in a world that watches, in a forest of eyes.  A person moving through nature — however wild, remote, even desolate the place may be — is never truly alone.  The surroundings are aware, sensate, personified.  They feel.  They can be offended.  And they must, at every moment, be treated with proper respect.  All things in nature have a special kind of life, something unknown to contemporary Euro-Americans, something powerful.”

The Koyukon were not exotic freaks.  Their worldview and spirituality had much in common with all other cultures that thrived in the long era before the domestication fad.  They were perfectly wild and free — healthy, happy, intelligent, normal human beings.  Most modern people go to their graves without ever experiencing the magnificent beauty and power of the living world — the joy and wonder of the gift of life, the awe of being fully present in a sacred reality.  Most of them live and die in monotonous manmade habitats, having established no spiritual connection to life.

Nelson was born in Madison, Wisconsin.  His father was employed by the state.  Their middle class life provided food, clothing, and shelter.  A large portion of his childhood was spent in institutions of education — indoors — digesting, memorizing, and regurgitating words and numbers.  At that time, Madison was a disaster of concrete, traffic, and hordes of strangers.  Decades earlier, the forest and wildlife had been devoured by the metastasizing city.  So, as a young animal, Nelson was raised in devastating poverty, like most modern kids, isolated from wildness and freedom.

Anyway, something cool happened.  In 1973, Nelson hooked up with the University of Alaska and began spending time with Native Americans.  He arrived with his Euro-American cultural programming, and its wacky anthropocentric model of the natural world.  He had zero doubt that his perception of reality was correct and proper; it was absolute truth.

Then, he hung out with the Koyukon, and this blew his belief system completely out of the water.  They were intelligent people, and they saw the world in a very different way.  This made his Ph.D. mind whirl and spin.  “My Koyukon teachers had learned through their own traditions about dimensions in nature that I, as a Euro-American, had either not learned to perceive or had been explicitly taught do not exist.”

In less than 200 years, the white wizards of Wisconsin have transformed a healthy wilderness into a hideous nightmare called Madison.  It never occurred to them to adapt to the ecosystem, live with great respect and mindfulness, and preserve its health for future generations.  The Koyukon, on the other hand, have inhabited their forest for thousands of years, and it doesn’t look much different from how they found it.  They know every place in their forest as well as you know your kitchen.  Every location is rich with stories and spirits.

The Egyptians built huge pyramids, enduring monuments to their civilized megalomania, built by legions of miserable slaves.  The Koyukon have achieved something far more impressive.  “This legacy is the vast land itself, enduring and essentially unchanged despite having supported human life for countless centuries.”

Nelson’s book is a reflection of their culture.  He presents separate chapters to describe the physical realm and climate, insects and amphibians, fishes, birds, small mammals, predators, and large animals.  Eighteen pages are devoted to their relationship with bears, and birds get 43 pages.  The core of their culture is their relationships with the non-human relatives that share their land, and the need to nurture these relationships with absolute respect.  Nature always punishes acts of disrespect with bad luck, illness, or death — to the offender, or to a family member.

The good news here is that it’s not impossible for a highly educated adult to override their toxic cultural programming and experience the beauty and power of creation.  Most never do.  The important message of this book is that we are absolutely lost, but there are paths that are not lost, healthy paths.  Our cage is not locked, and it’s so much nicer outside.  It’s alive!

Nelson, Richard K., Make Prayers to the Raven — A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1983.