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.

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.

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

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.

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. 

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.

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?)

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.

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.”  

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