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Getting Along in Our Seasons of Living

3/5/2016

 
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Yesterday I was walking at Hamaatsa. I went way down the hill to the west where it leads into an area that holds a stand of old trees. There among the junipers and pinons was a very old pine tree.  These are some of the oldest trees here on this land.  At one time pine trees grew here which is evident from all the exotic petrified wood scattered about. 

I remembered a past winter day when I was out with my son and a friend to gather wood for our winter hearth.  We came upon this old tree stand that day. Although we set out with the task to get a truck load of wood that morning, we didn’t just go barreling down that road into this amazing stand of old trees and start cutting away with our chainsaws. We aren’t machines. Those trees are People. Those are Juniper and Pinon.  And they are seasoned.  They could possibly be 300-400 years old, those big trees down that way. Seasons of time. And us humans are wandering around in these seasons. And what are we doing? Methodically getting wood to make carbon go up in the air?  If we could only recognize our own seasons, maybe then we could share our own seasons of living with each other. We could listen to the seasons of the older people among us.  My gosh, what we would gain if we took the time to share like that! 
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Looking out the southern windows in the Shepherd's House, we see the sunrise every morning as a glorious reminder of our seasons here at Hamaatsa. This morning in that white dawn time I saw the juniper and pinon silhouetted on the ridge edge. What I saw was not just trees but something distinct in their character.
 
I recalled that time when we came out here on this land in the early days before the land purchase was finalized. We'd walked in from the main road and walked over the hill, coming along that ridge edge. We hadn't had the boundary survey done yet and we were checking a topo map to identify the boundaries.  When we got there to the top of that hill which is now known as the Southern Boundary, I saw two trees.  Pinon and Juniper. I knew those two trees were generously inside the southern line. I said to Deborah and our two sons, “Okay, we'll stop here.  This is where we will make our very first prayer before we enter this land.”
 
We did this to remember how thankful we were that we were even standing there on this beautiful land that we had begun to call "Hamaatsa" - a Pueblo Keresan word referring to "a time to start over once again".  We marked the place with a small stone cairn, so we would enter this way again and continue to enter in that prayerful way with thanksgiving. 
 
This was a place where Pinon and Juniper were side by side, growing together. These two trees.  This is what they know:  They know how to get along in the same land.  They help each other grow stronger in each other's shadow.   One is always slightly larger than the other offering nurturing shelter to the younger.
 
I can sure remember that day, now sitting here side by side with my wife Deborah, both of us looking out the window as the sun rises over the land. We can see when the sun touches that same ridge-line and starts to come up over the Ortiz Mountain peaks.  A reminder that we are in our seasons.  Unending season after season of a People learning to live on this land. That's what we were asking for that day.  Teach us.  How can we live here? All those who have lived here before. Help us. That we can learn and find the way to do this together. And it doesn't just mean us two, or us four, or those of us who are here right now. Look at Pinon and Juniper, there are two of them right there. But they are among their kin, their brethren. Everywhere you look, there they are. Season after season.
 
Learning to help each other grow in what many would describe as an inhospitable place, actually has all the ingredients and nourishment for learning to live together. That's all we are trying to do. How do we feel toward anyone else from some other nearby place, or another part of the world? How are we going to get along with them? How are we going to show them we are like Pinon and Juniper? What are they going to see when they look at us?  When we come walking across that ridge looking for home.

Photos by Deborah Littlebird

A MILLION FROGS GIVE PRAISE

8/22/2014

 
By Deborah Littlebird
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Seven years ago, Larry Littlebird wrote an inspired story when we first arrived on the land at Hamaatsa.  In the story he tells us, “I hear the sound of singing waters, I see crops coming alive and the animals returning to this land.”

Last night something occurred on the land.  A miracle really. 

The Arroyo de Tanos flowed rushing river-like water through the land.  Must have rained hard up higher in the watershed --in the Ortiz Mountains that shadow the background of this stark landscape.  How long have we yearned to see the water flow here on this land?

In the late afternoon, clouds begin to form.   Dark clouds gather making a patchwork with still blue sky.   The loving rain begins to softly sprinkle all around us.  Sun and rain together.  In the distance we watch vertical sheet like rain touching earth, the kind so often depicted in Pueblo Indian paintings and on their pottery.  Thunder is walking.  A double rainbow appears with a shaft of spectral light beaming down directly in front the Shepherds House porch!  Then the rain falls hard, sideways, driving us inside the shelter of the little adobe.  Door left open wide, we rejoice watching not wanting to miss a thing playing in this atmospheric land cinema.  We watch and listen to this magnificent thunderstorm coming to dry parched land.  

After a half hour of a good downpour the rain begins to dissipate and then Larry says, “I am going to go check where the water has run, so I can adjust my water runoff ditches.”  Coming from an indigenous Southwest culture and People who are in constant relationship with the land, you learn to do things like this as if your life depends upon it.  And it does!

I sit quietly inside listening to the gentle rain now lifting, smelling the fresh air, feeling the coolness in the adobe room.  Suddenly Larry returns, rushing through the still open door, “Come! Hurry! The arroyo is running!  It’s flowing!" 

I quickly change into hiking shoes, grab a rain jacket and off I go toward the sandy Arroyo which I can see in the distance now looks like a huge roaring mountain river.   Oh my goodness! Never have I seen such a sight!  As I approach the water’s edge, I hear the sound of water, so purposeful and alive.   It’s like it knows it’s own power.  Healing power to the land, the creatures, the plants and the humans.   It garners respect to stand here so close.  Instantly, instinctively, I know one must not try to cross to the other side.  The immense force would wash you away.

Being ever the photographer, my mind shifts to wanting to capture this event!  Great I have my new iPhone with me.  I must document this phenomena to share with our friends and family.  

When folks visit Hamaatsa, they always ask us, “Does this arroyo ever have water in it?” “Not likely in this drought. We have never seen it run in seven years”, we always reply.  

I hear the rocks speaking under the rushing water currents. I put my camera phone back in my pocket and just stand still now to listen.  A talking river at Hamaatsa.  How incredulous!  Never in my most creative daydreaming could I imagine this. 

And we are here.  Now. Hamaatsa.

Larry is up ahead moving up stream.  He calls back to me, “Come on, hurry!”  He is a like a little boy with his quickened steps.  The excitement is all about him.   I smile at his sense of adventure, but I want to go slow.  This is so significant on so many levels and I want to savor it.   So I tell him, “Go on, I’ll catch up”. 

I video, walk a little ways upstream, stop and listen again, video some more, stop and stand still again. Standing with my back toward the setting sun, I see the flowing stream begin to reflect the color red. I turn around and there is the most amazingly crimson cloud sunset I have ever seen here.  I feel like I am in a fairytale, a world of make believe.  My spirit tells me: You are really here -- standing in a place between heaven and earth. 

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Up the road, the arroyo is still rushing strong as twilight falls on land and water.   In the background I hear an unusual sound.  Like a truck stuck in mud revving it’s motor back and forth.  No wait, it sounds like frogs.  But that can’t be.  There are no frogs here at Hamaatsa.  Never seen one single frog.  The sound is mystifying.  As I walk up the road alongside the arroyo, I chirp my little turkey call to locate Larry.   This is a familiar way in which we find each other when we are out and about on the land.  I chirp again. No reply.  I keep walking upstream.  I resort to cell phone chirping and call Larry on my phone.   He answers immediately, “Quick come up to the top of the road!”  “What is that sound I ask him”.  He replies, “It’s a million frogs giving praise!”  

I get to the top of the road where there is a dry to the bone pond which has been resting in the heat year after year.  It is now filled with water and there are frogs croaking.  The sound fills the night.   I close my eyes and just listen to this strange beautiful sound.  The land is alive.  Larry stands beside me and gently nudges me.  I open my eyes just as the full moon rises in a peak notch of the Ortiz Mountains now a blackened backdrop in this mystical night.  Oh my!  The super full moon in July.

Miracle upon miracle unfolds that night.  All at once and overtaking us with blessing. As we walk back to the house, I recall Larry’s story about the sound of singing waters returning to this this land.  It has come, it arrived. Hamaatsa in Keres language means a place and a time arriving NOW! I feel wrapped in the wet evening balm of Creator’s grace and power moving across the land.  I am grateful to be here. 

Since that night, it has rained every week at Hamaatsa in July and August, greening the land like no other time. And the Arroyo de Tanos has run four times this summer.   

Everything that has breath gives praise.

Video clips of Arroyo de Tanos flowing and frogs emerging

RE-MEM-BER

4/18/2014

 
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Seasons come and seasons pass.  With all the seasons comes opportunity.  Many folks think of seasons in terms of time passing as in growing old.  One of the greatest opportunities to come with seasons is the choosing.  Making a choice is an action I relish.  It is an action that’s taken awhile to discover and learn to appreciate. 

As a young filmmaker, one of my first opportunities to actually make a film came about working with some other Indians as new to the craft as I was.  With our enthusiasm undaunted by our limited experience and skill we persisted and made a film series for television called, The Real People.  These were some of the first films about Indians and made by Indians in the U.S. who actually had “professional” film training. In that series was an episode titled, Season of Grandmothers.  It’s this chosen title that today reminds me as I grow older, how I’ve gained such a tremendous gift because so many people have helped me appreciate how to savor the season where I find myself. 

In today’s age of fast technology, slowing down is becoming more complicated or it appears that way. A tribal elder of mine and I were once speeding north along a stretch of smooth highway heading across the broad plains of Wyoming.  “Where you going so fast?” he asked and then added, “Slow down. We haven’t been here in a long time.  Let’s take a good look.  See how beautiful it is.” 

Slowing down the car and puzzled by his comment I responded, “A long time?  We’ve never been up here before.”  He gazed out over the rolling expanse taking it all in and then replied, “You haven’t been listening.” And he began telling me stories of our people’s travels over these lands that we were now crossing. 

Mile after mile, story after story, his voice bringing alive a picture of me and my people making our way, unhurried because we only had to be exactly where we were in that incredible moment.  It was an epic travelogue! Immense in its antiquity and detailed with place names in our language for particular features of the land like waterways, mountains and valleys. I could begin to see and to understand why my sense of time up to now was so incomplete. 

After a couple hundred miles past, he paused and as he looked away from the long horizon I could feel him stare at me as I drove.  I imagined him smiling as I heard what he said next.  “You see why some of our old people seem to act like they do?  They never want to do anything too quickly.  It can be frustrating because they look like they’re stuck in the past somewhere.  They’re the real Indians. They’ve been here for so long and they remember and don’t forget.” His eyes were on the vision in front of him and he no longer needed to look at me.  He knew he had me as he laughed and said, “Dinosaur blood!  That’s what does it; mixed with whatever other blood they got flowing through them.”

Grandmother’s and Grandfather’s, Season after Season, that’s what I have.  I remember to re-mem-ber and am thankful that these members are all the parts of me.  Yes, I am grateful for all who are past.  Yes, for every person up to the moment who has graced my life with their presence as I see them.

Oh the multitude, the numberless, the many arriving into my life that I might gain this insight that humans are linked inexplicably, intricately designed to share the magnitude of Creation, vast beyond any single person or creature.  A long, long line, I see them, the members, as I remember them, one after another:  Life with no end. 

Photo by Deborah Littlebird, courtesy of Hamaatsa.

WORD VALUE 

4/10/2014

 
One of the gifts listening to stories offers, is learning to savor insights that come only through listening to a story told many times.  Sometimes especially over time, the tellers change and although the story told is relatively the same, a teller’s personal experiences always brings new insights and for the listener: a possibility of renewed interest.  This can then develop over a period not only of time but as it then becomes a process maturing as interest grows. 

It’s always been fascinating for me, when the opportunity to listen to older Native Elders sharing stories has come along because it’s a chance to hear and listen in a way that is impossible to duplicate or re-in-act. 

When I was a young boy, I remember listening to songs being shared among family members: two older men who were in-laws by relationship and several other relations who happened to be present on that particular evening.  At the end of one especially vivid song filled with a lot of Keres language (many songs are simply sounds without distinct words), one of the men asked the one leading the song to describe a word that was used.  It was a rare moment.  Most often no questions are asked and people come to understand things over time.  In this case, the singer repeated the word. The man asking simply nodded yes and with everyone’s focused attention upon the singer, he spoke. “Thay-we-yah-nhi. It’s blessing.  It’s the blessing that comes even without asking. Blessed because that one has been gifted by The One Who Blesses.”  When I heard the words I could see it.  The blessing that comes without asking. The vision of that word phrase stayed with me from that early time and I watch for it even now.     

My sheep camp days, growing up with my Ba-bah and Nun-nah (gramma and grampa), helped me to greatly maintain this kind of watchfulness. Looking back, I now see my grandparents had that attentiveness because someone had helped them.  And in this simple act we all helped one another.  They both enjoyed great humility and this gave them a deep broad sense of humor.  Also, their teasing and joking helped me to become easily accepting and forgiving and hold no grudges. It provided an early confidence in learning to like people.

Grampa, probably because he had more chances to interact with other people, had a direct open way about him when meeting new people.  I witnessed it many times.  Gramma’s way was more quietly accepting and courteous.  Years later when I was attending art school in Santa Fe, I came back to the Rez to visit them at their sheep camp bringing with me one of my art teachers.  What I distinctly remember from that visit was seeing my grampa’s interaction with this adult person who was a stranger to him and also “a white man.” Grampa seldom used English to communicate or maybe I was seldom present when he did.  I found it interesting and intriguing to hear him conversing with my teacher in a relaxed, gentle manner with his sparse use of words foreign to him and yet making himself understood in how he felt.  After that first visit, my teacher enjoyed driving me out to visit on a regular basis and everyone became better acquainted.

Once I was no longer in school and visiting Ba-bah and Nun-nah more and more by myself, driving my own car, I was surprised when one day, my grampa asked me about my teacher.  Speaking to me in our language he asked, “Cum-meh-eht-huu, So-kee-nee, Jim?”  It was a simple inquiry meaning, “And how about my friend, Jim?” However it was the intonation of his voice that alerted me to what the words conveyed.  So-kee-nee means friend in my Keres language.  Nun-nah had used the word with the fuller intention of friend, indicating he was choosing to befriend this individual, Jim.  

In seemingly casual instances like this is where much can be gleaned from what I refer to as tribal orality and the slow story.  Friend, friendship and relation, relationship all refer to and acknowledge a similar meaning in our English language because they are close to being the same.  In the use of So-kee-nee as Grampa spoke it, there is an oral tradition cultural difference. 

Word value could be what this is called.  Often when people speak in whatever language they grow up with, they become conditioned to using certain words or phrases to describe actions that require fuller attention.  In order to be realized a certain disregard takes place.  When this happens people easily slip into becoming unaware of a deeper sense of living being made available.  It appears that as daily living requires a faster pace to maintain, the human sensibility to felt relationship diminishes.  This is my perception in observations I’ve come to be aware of as a tribal person growing up in an American society that moves faster and faster each day.

APPS AND GADGETS

3/7/2014

 
On a recent trip, I read an article in a flight magazine that grabbed my attention.  The article was titled Body Conscious.  It was about becoming aware of and more in tune with your body by using the latest electronic self-tracking apps and gadgets.  

It’s fascinating discovering how out of touch I’ve become while living my “slow story” pace.  It also let me know that tribal people wherever they’re found always seem to have and use some device that has simple and similar applications.  

These body sensor, self tracking apps and gadgets are controlled by the latest smart phones.  Many are very simple wrist bands that are made using various flexible, synthetic materials that come in assorted colors.  Of course they’re all designed to put you in touch with your body and help you “ track who you are” by the measurements that are computed and recorded.  Bands around the wrist is what made me think of my Sheep Camp Grampa. 
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One time, when I was washing my face and hands in the enamel wash basin on the little wood table by the doorway, I noticed how he was paying attention to me as I washed.  When I dried my  arms, face and hands, he nodded his head in my direction, pursed his lips ever so slightly pointing to my left wrist, as he spoke, “You know what’s that called?”  I replaced the towel on its wall peg and turning to my left asked, “You mean this?”

“Hmm.” He grunted, with a nod.  In Keres, I said, “Ai-yah-dru-me-soosh-tuu.” He didn’t respond right away.  I figured he was surprised I knew the name for the wide leather band wrapped around my left wrist. Next he said, “Know what it’s for?” 

“It’s so when you shoot the bow and you let go of the string, the string won’t slap and hurt you.” I quickly answered. Then he said, “Is that all?”  What else was there?  What else could there be?  I stood there feeling the dark, smooth leather, gently twisting it around my wrist, waiting for him to go on.  “You wear it on your left side, coo-mu-suh, isn’t that correct?” he asked. 

I quickly said, “Yeah, I shoot right handed!”  He then lifted his arm and pulled up his shirt sleeve to show me the old warn leather strap on his left wrist.  He’d worn that piece of leather, now dark and polished smooth, ever since he was a boy.  That leather band was an artifact!  Then he added, “It’s on your left side, see?  Your heart is on this side.  You wear your bow guard to remind you to guard your heart.  And to remember the man, that heart makes you.”

 “This is the way it is, Grandson. Nun-nah, be a man!”  

Ironic, isn’t?  How this piece of leather must be an App?  And out there somewhere, Nun’nah and I must both have our smart phones tracking who we are. 

Photo credits: Nike.com; cardiio.com 

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'

3/1/2014

 
Hollis Brown, he lives on the other side of town, with his five children and his house all broken down. - Bob Dylan

Praise God, what would we do without His prophets, poets and mystics, preaching and singing, reaching into our dark closet clutters?  MLK and Presidents' Day have passed. Super Bowl Sunday has come and gone, but we still have the Academy Awards to look forward to.  It doesn't get any better, does it?
At Hamaatsa, on our southern boundary, we have what is called a quarter-mile marker.  It’s an engraved stone survey marker registered in Washington D.C.  The marker was placed there in 1856.  It was part of the first U.S. survey after the so-called, Mexican War. The survey was part of completing the “sea to shining sea manifest destiny” of this country. 
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For me, that small upright chipped rock is a constant reminder of how this planet Earth has reached this time when we humans will again have to clean out the mess piled in the dark. When I listen to Dylan's songs, The Ballad of Hollis Brown and the Times They Are A-Changin', I see my own villages, my Pueblos and I understand a little bit more where I am as a native born son of this land at a place called, Hamaatsa.  The U.S. is so young and Indians of this continent seem so much older now, even as our populations appear to be growing in number. Yet fewer “real Indians” by the “official count.” The name, Hamaatsa (a place arriving now) and that historic stone marker remind me to pay attention to the task I have as I appear to walk away from the Rez.  

Indian Reservations are really holding grounds.  They are part of the plan for taking all the land.  Ask the next endangered creature you happen to meet if you want some authentic insight?  Wolf.  Yeah Wolf, would be a keen insight.  Here in New Mexico, we have one of the biggest battles taking place around wolf issues.  The fight is more about who is wild as in “Wildman with a wildlife”, than providing lands we can share with creatures that have been here much longer.  Come to think of it, a Wolf History would make for a good study about Indians in the Americas.  Better save this for another essay because it’ll be a deep, painful look at mirror images that are tough for anyone.  And you'll have to become more than a lover of animals!

The Hamaatsa vision is truly beautiful.  This is because it’s about work.  Yeah!  Hands in the dirt, kneeling, crawling, digging kind of work.  And it’s for People.  The winged, scaled, sleek, feathered, finned, furred, hoofed, clawed, webbed, crawling, eight, six, four, two-leggeds, Hobah-Hanuh, all the people.  Hollis Brown and his five children; Auntie May and her curds of whey kind of people;  reconnecting to what a neighbor is and understanding why it’s good.  This is orality and Hamaatsa is simply a sacred story deposit ground where listening can be learned.  

Everyone has to make or be blessed to find their own Hamaatsa.  My guess is all can learn what it feels like to reconnect to an Earth mother, who can care and teach them what has been misplaced or stolen, and then choose correctly what they will do with something so filled with wonder and power as their own choice.  
    
    The line it is drawn
    The curse it is cast
    The slow one now
    Will later be fast
    As the present now
    Will later be past
    The order is rapidly fadin’
    And the first one now will later be last
    For the times they are a-changin’

    - Bob Dylan

People refer to me as a storyteller. I always remind them I’m a listener not a teller.  As I listen to the prophets, poets and mystics, I’m encouraged that what I hear as I’m learning to listen is a simple song the Earth sang for the children in its first dawn.  It’s simple because I’m not complicated. I must be a child to understand.

Why is the Earth singing?  She sings to the One Who Made Her.  What is she singing?  Her Love.
     I listen to Her song.            
     I am filled with peace.
     This is the time and the place to be.
     And I remember.
     The waters are separated by a great expanse. 
     The land is coming forth. 
     New again.
“Here my Love, is my Song", she sings, as God listens, because this is what the Creator knows how to do.  He enjoys the songs we sing.

Photo Credit: Deborah Littlebird courtesy of Hamaatsa

HUMMINGBIRD BOY

1/27/2014

 
Climate Change Essays (4)
In the beautiful Jemez Mountains, located northwest of Albuquerque and west of Santa Fe, the very mountains where Los Alamos is situated and close to the site of the scientific labs where the Atomic bomb was developed and built is also the site of another geological feature named, Valle Grande.  It’s an extinct volcanic caldera, an ambling treeless valley that stretches and presses widely with ridges and peaks that ring and shape this impressive earthen feature into what some have described as the “right eye of Earth peering into celestial space.” It is this region of the earth, before the caldera, which is the location of the Hummingbird Boy story.  

The people in the story are already ancient on the earth.  They were here when the ocean coastline was visible and they remembered the little fires along the edges of the glacial cirques.  They could recall the sound ice makes tinkling and receding in the night.  Now their lives were in the shaded, rich loam, sand canyons winding their way to the river valleys below.  Abundant peace was theirs and they held it closely together, as one.
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In stories like this, it’s almost impossible for us to grasp what a life lived in a manner that evokes peace could possibly be like.  This is why the oral telling is vital and necessary.  Around a small fire with no other place to be or go, the listener is caught by the flicker of light.  Slowly, the focus is upon the sound of a human voice making words that touch deeply and help recall all those other times when the reality connecting so many lives is again made tangible.  

Maybe this is why in our bustling world, the United States leads most other nations in chasing after adventures that stimulate a sense of being alive.  Travel adventure can certainly be seen as a by-product of the Transport Industry.  

The breadth of this nation was ideal for traversing.  Once those “pesky Redskins,” obstructing progress could be dealt with, then expansion would be quick and profitable.  Kill the bison herds, free the nation.  It was a simple solution: saved time, made money and unified the people for whom it was destined. 

A few rapid decades and travel over land and water, by steam or rail, was possible for any adventurer with or without the cash.  “Go west, young man!” was more than a timely jingle, it was a challenge to the growing populous.  It created a fear of being left behind and a sense of loss for any chance to “get yours.”  In the filling and empting of wallets resulting from empires built and lost, a creature with an enormous appetite was being birthed.  Never had the world experienced so many individuals all determined to control wealth and the lives of people struggling to make life livable to standards so rapidly shifting.  

This nation’s history books are like ledgers filled with the many names of the men who now owned the financial treasuries and securities that were determined for anyone who dared to stake their claim.  The fact that you were White and male was all the credibility needed.

Now here we all are.  Lumped together as citizens and yet our ability to amass financial wealth still determines who gets what of that which cannot ever be fairly divided: who will live what kind of life; who will die, and what kind of death?  Harsh?  No.  Just very real, when one can see how we the people have been here before and we still have no inward changes to reveal that being free is a reality.  Yet, we have all around us the promotions that we are free to select and choose the very life we want to live. 

Climate change is worldwide.  It affects all, no matter where we live on the planet. It’s quite astonishing really, to know everyone is being affected.  It will be awhile yet, before the effects truly hit folks directly where they presently live.  Certainly, the various unseasonal storms hitting this nation are an indicator of situations still on the way. Although this little message may have undertones of doomsday prophecy, it’s true intention is to aid people in preparing for what has been taking shape. And a long time coming.
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Man cannot destroy the earth.  He can do it great harm though.  In which all earthly beings will suffer immensely.  One example is atomic energy.  What is it that man appears to have harnessed?  Who is that man?  What is the harness?  I’m not sure if these questions have been asked before.  I’m simply a man with a story I want to share.  It’s the only thing I know to do in a time like this.  I know this because the story tells me piece-by-piece, bit-by-bit to reveal the actions that can be taken by choosing.  Choosing correctly?  No, not exactly.  In fact, exact has never belonged to man.  Learning to listen, a person can make discoveries like this and be prepared for what to do when Coyote and Snake show up as they always do when interesting things are about to happen.

Coyote alone has experienced lifetimes of making poor choices.  He’s worthy to watch when attempting to find a way through sticky situations that often turn into dangerous episodes.  Matter fact, it was Coyote bragging ‘bout all the beautiful daughters of powerful people he knew that got everything and everyone riled and mixed up in that time when Hummingbird Boy was first active among the people: The People Who Could Make Things Grow and The Hunter People, the people of few words.         

Photo Credits: Deborah Littlebird

HEIRLOOM STORIES ARE SIGNPOSTS

1/27/2014

 
Climate Change Essays (3)

There is a story from my tribal oral tradition, which I haven’t wanted to write about.  First, it is a spoken word experience to be told the old way during winter storytelling time.  Then there is the story content, which is so layered and rich, it requires time and retelling for the understanding of the story to begin to appear. Most people will never regain the story retellings essential for learning.  In spite of my personal objections, an interesting experience happened to me amidst last year’s drought and inspired me to find a way to begin to share guiding precepts from the epic story of Hummingbird Boy.
This past spring at Hamaatsa, seeds from a planting in late fall of the previous year sprouted.  A deep trench had been dug and then fine arroyo sand filled the long narrow row.  Flowering plants producing pollen are crucial for our honeybee’s maintaining a healthy hive.  The Rocky Mountain Bee Plant, known to me as Gua’kuu in my Keresan language, is one such amazing flowering pollinator plant with many uses. 
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Its’ leaves are nutritious as a food.  Cooked into a paste, it can be applied to clay pottery used much like ink for decoration and then when the clay is fired the ink-paint becomes permanent.  Once rooted, Gua’kuu is prolific and can quickly become established even in arid areas.  

I was excited when I saw a row of sprouting plants popping through the deep sand.  My excitement was short lived when the following day in the twenty-foot row only two plants remained.  Rodents, maybe ground squirrels, burrowing mice, cottontail rabbits, or possibly even birds, may have helped themselves to a feast of new greens in the bleak drought ridden spring we were having.  Still, only two little plants poked through the sand.  I was astonished to keep seeing the two baby plants surviving from day to day.  At last a sigh of relief when one of the stalks reached a height of eight inches.  Eventually, I quit watching their progress so closely.  One week passed before I was in their area again.  How could I have missed what I was seeing so beautifully before me?  One strong stalk, three feet tall with a single brilliant lavender ball of bloom waving gently in the morning light!  

I stood frozen in place at what I was seeing as I remembered: This is the flower that Hummingbird Boy finds in that epic story of drought! The plant emerges through a small, very round two-inch hole in the earth.  It looks just like this one!   In the story, the People are given the way to start over.  Now in this parched dry land right here at Hamaatsa, I received my own personal experience bearing witness to how potent these heirloom stories are. I realized that I’ve managed to hold on to them by telling them over and over again, even into these changing climate times.

All people the world over have their stories.  Spoken words are part of the cultures and become part of their languages and traditions.  There must have been a time when man was rich with Language.  Printed literature is really very new to humans.  It can become very misleading and like other great discoveries, very dangerous when corrupted.   All great stories tell about human susceptibility to corruption and loss of integrity.  A quick personal check whoever we are, is to answer truthfully, “When and where and with whom, did I last listen to a story that revealed insights into the ebb and flow of human actions that make up a known personal journey that connects me to who I am right now?” 
Hummingbird Boy is one of those stories. It reveals who humans are when they are connected to one another through their connection to all that lives and dies.  It brings understanding of how disconnections come about and the near impossible task to reconnect.  It also reveals how every culture and racial group of people are attempting in their own ways to regain their former connectivity. 
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The story intimates the distance and timeframe necessary for the human mind to comprehend the immensity of human endeavor to regain a sensibility for restoring a divine and harmonious order. I believe it’s a sacredness that can only be called the Mind of God.
Throughout the Americas are story deposits divinely located like signposts pointing the way.  Many Indigenous people are still able to share, at least one to another, these stories, which give direction. It’s unfortunate that the light skinned ones leading the return to these so-called new worlds have been such spoiled children with their eyes and appetites focused on obtaining rich resources in the earth.  This resulted in one of the greatest natural resources of these lands to slip through the fingers of greed and delay the true wealth that belongs to all people to be gathered and shared.  It does make for a true-shared story of trauma.  

Hmmmm.  Maybe this is why the search for a Listener?  Someone who can use their time to sit around a small fire and one day discover a boy that is a hummingbird.

Photo Credits: Deborah Littlebird, courtesy of Hamaatsa; USDA Forest Service.

MAKE FIRE

1/14/2014

 
Climate Change Essays (2)

Many of the people I've come to love dearly have been very simple folk.  Deeply thoughtful and hearts full with exuberant glee, they've welcomed me into their immense lives.  I often recall something my Gramma would say when I was little. “Ho’thrah’duh’wah Mericana? Who are these Americans?” she would ask. For such a simple question these words have a way to ask and inquire about so much.  Certainly, more deeply than this translation possibly conveys. However, what is required for understanding is the repetition of this question until a number of meanings can begin to be grasped. That’s why Gramma asked again and again, and over time I’ve come to recognize this form of acknowledgement among my language-linked people.  

We’ve come to recognize that understanding doesn’t come because someone provides an answer.  Understanding requires time.  Time is something everyone has, however, very few ever truly learn how to spend their time so that understanding can be fully comprehended.  A precept I’ve been given is to slow down when I truly want to experience clarity.  Slow down means exactly that.  Take steps carefully, slowly and resist assumptions my thinking mind will make.

A way that I’ve learned to slow down is to make a fire.  Maybe it’s because during most of my early life, I watched gramma’s and grampa’s make early morning fires.  Or maybe it’s because fire is so amazingly fascinating to a little boy.  Over the years, what I now call, “loneliness of the early morning firemaker,” is truly a way, a discipline to come to know the morning.  The morning beginning in darkness and coming alive into day.  What is it like to see how the light breaks upon the world, morning after morning throughout the seasons?

Fire making by itself isn’t a difficult task, once simple steps like make sure to keep your strike anywhere matches dry have been acquired through practice.  Purists will object that unless one learns to make fire by friction using gathered materials or striking special stones together or flint and steel to make sparks to ignite a flame, a person doesn’t really know how to make fire. As true as this might be, the task here is learning to slow down.  Maybe over time or with focused effort a person can gain these other primitive disciplines. 

I enjoy the fact that matches are a man-made modern invention.  Matches are significant accessories for learning to slow down.  Take a careful look at a match and remember: before man invented a way to put fire on the end of a little stick, all people had to learn at least one of the other ways to spark a flame that starts a fire.  (Well maybe the wealthy were always able to pay someone to start their fires?)
Today, almost everyone worldwide has lost this crucial relationship to Fire. Of course, Fire is one of the essential life elements, as well as Air, Water and Earth.  And now, Lost Man wanders in search of an identity.  Is it “a looking for a being-sense,” that the wandering is really all about?  I wonder? I can see how a self-less being quickly begins to act according to its own consciousness, can you?  It’s why my Gramma asked her question, “Ho’thrah’duh’wah Mericana? Who are these Americans?”  She’d learned to recognize a being without self.  
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Whenever I hear the prophet-poet, Bob Dylan, sing, “Strike another match, go start anew”, I laugh and wonder who his gramma might be?

Can you see it?  Strike another match?  Every time a new fire is being made in the dark morning, another match is lit and I get to start all over again!

However, Firekeeping is altogether a different pursuit and has more in common with Climate Change, as a resilient action in times of drought. Whoops, have to save that one for another sharing in the slow story.

Credit: Artwork by Jesse Raine Littlebird, courtesy of the artist.

OUR MOTHER THE EARTH

1/9/2014

 
Climate Change Essays (1)
Living in this day when “climate change” is coming to be recognized around the planet, or at least acknowledged by world-wide populations, it’s become common to refer to our planet Earth, as Mother Earth. And also acceptable to believe the planet is a living entity and that a positive role for humankind is to learn to “love our mother.”  
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As Mother Earth bumper stickers make this pronouncement throughout byways and highways of the U.S., are we even able to imagine a planet world, as Mother?  Today’s global communication appears to mentally link humans closer together.  It’s described as “factual knowledge.” In this age of information, what is this information?  Many would agree information is a way to know things.  Some would point out that knowing things can become knowledge.  For myself, I’ve come to know and love people. Is this knowledge?  I’m not sure.  This is most likely why I’m attempting to share these ideas and stories electronically.  

Ideas are a primary connector for humans.  All humans have ideas. As children, we start out with the ideas we’re born with and with development the ideas can grow or become stunted.  For ideas to develop into their greatest good they must be shared.  This sharing develops through relationships that are personal.  Young children who are encouraged to express their natural artistic instincts develop into people who then hold common values and virtues that serve to set positive examples for the whole.  

There are still tribal communities around the world, who although severely oppressed and at the economic bottom, continue to be one of the richest repositories for tested human virtues and values that still serve people today. Tribal peoples are one the most studied People groups.  Anthropology, archeology, and ethnology, are all very recent fields of academic study that have collected vast amounts of clinical, scientific documented data. However, little interest is given to who we, as tribal people say we are today; where we understand ourselves to come from or believe ourselves to be. It’s sad and becomes true with each and every passing day. 

For me, this is why global climate shifts potentially hold ways for humans to make positive change toward one another. Learning to become a friend and humbly coming alongside another person is possibly one of the rarest attributes for any individual to personally experience today.  If the planet is truly a “mother” then it is a mother’s love which will endure and can bring about the nurturing attitudes needed during extreme hardships that must be faced in coming to understand effects of world-wide climate change.   

Credit: Painting by Larry Littlebird, courtesy of the family collection        
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